ill 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Sop^rigl^tln 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/ 



/* 



W' >» ••«-. 



**«^ 



€./^^ 



derla 





<; 



!v^^- 






o 



8 \ "'^'ll lii 



&l 



M 



O 



.^^^A 



I A\. 



ff' xdvd 3H1 % do AbvaNnoa/i J-Sva / -'I V — ^' \ -\ % \ 

. ] "* « -•^^— ..-^.. 11--.;— — .•,^».«^.™..«.6_..*-__.V.«_t'.._ 



o 




! I 



N' 



^ _^ ~c :o 

"n_J..Jo..J 'i^."._ J..X...! .' o 'i^,l..'Y," ^ ' ^ n 




MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS HOTEL, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, 





ONDERLAND; 



Th e Paci fic 



Northwest 



AND Alaska 



With a Description of the Country Traversed by the 
Northern Pacific Railroad. 



jo]i^ \{yb^, 



AUTHOR OF 




'THE WONDERLAND ROUTE TO THE PACIFIC COAST," "ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN 
THE NEW WONDERLAND," ETC., ETC. 



COPYRIGHTED, 1888, 

By CHAS. S FEE, General Passenger and Ticket Agent, 

Northern Pacific Railroad, St. Paul. 



H1^ 




Printers, Engravers and Electrotypers, Chicago. 



INDEX. 



J'AGE 

Alaska, Agricultural Capabilities of ---------- 80 

Bibliography of -----------72 

Climate of --.-....--- 63, 77, 94 

Extent of -------- - - - - 77 

Facilities for Visiting _-.--. .-.--68 

Fisheries of - - - - - - - - . - . . - 79 

Glaciers of - - - - - - - - - - - ■ - §7. 89 

Hunting in --------- - ... 93 

Mineral Resources of . - - - - - - - - - 80, 85, 93 

Native Races of ------------ 79 

Scenic and General Attractions of -....-. 6S-94 

Alaskans, Peculiar Customs of the _-----.-.- 83 

Angling in Clark's Fork of the Columbia, I . T. . - - . - - - 45 

the Gallatin River, M. T. - - - - - . - - - - 34 

Green River, W. T. - - . - - - - - - 57 

LakePend d'Oreille, I. T. _-----..-- 45 

Minnesota ----------- 10, 13 

Wisconsin - - - - - - - - - - -ii 

the Yellowstone River, M. T. - . - - - - - - 25 

Arctic Scenery --------------87 

Ashland, Superior and West Superior - - -- - - - - n 

Astoria, Oregon ----------- 67 

" Bad Lands " of the Little Missouri, D. T. ------ - 19 

Bismarck, the Capital of Dakota . _ - - - - - - - 17 

Butte City, the Greatest Mining Camp in the World ------ 38 

Cascade Mountains, Crossing the _ - - - - - - - -55 

Clark's Fork of the Columbia ---------- 43 

Coeur d'Alene Country - - _ " - - - - - - . 43, 50 

Columbia River _------_----- 63 

Dakota, Growth of ------------- 15 

Detroit Lake, Minn. ----_-.-.--- 13 

Duck and Goose Shooting - . - - - - - - - - . 13, 17 

Duluth, Minn. ----_-. 10 

Flathead Country, M. T. --_.-.------ 43 

Fort Wrangell, Alaska -. ---------- 83 

Glacier Bay, Alaska -_--.-- 89 

Gold Mine, the Richest in the World --------- 85 

Goose Shooting in Dakota - - _ - . - - - - - - -17 

Helena and the Romance of Mining --------- 35 

Hunting in Alaska .- ------93 

Idaho— Kootenai Country, Lake Kanasku, etc. . - - - 4S 

Minnesota --_.------- 10, 12 

Montana ------------ 26 

Wisconsin - - - - - - - - - -I2 

James River Valley, D. T. . - - - - - . - - - - 17 

(3) 



4 INDEX. 

FAGS- 

Juneau, Alaska, and the Mines of Douglas Island . . . . . - . 85 

Lake Coeur d'Alene, I. T. . . . ...... 50 

Lake Park Region of Minnesota . - . - - - - - - -I2 

Lake Pend d'Oreille, L T. _....--.-- 47 

Lake Superior ....-.--.----- 10 

Minneapolis and St. Paul ...-------- 6 

Minnehaha, Falls of --..---------9 

Montana, Grazing Industry of ...-.---- 22 

Northwest, Marvelous Development of the . _ . _ .... 6 

General Attractions of the ._...-.-. 6 

Portland, Oregon ........--.--61 

Puget Sound Country — Climate, etc. ......-- 60, 6g 

Red River Valley ... ........ 15, 16 

Rocky Mountains, Crossing the .-.......- 37 

San Francisco to Puget Sound, etc. ...-...--63 

Sitka, Alaska ..._...-.--.- gr 

Spokane Falls, W. T. ............ 49 

Stock Raising in the Northwest ..._....-. 19 

St. Paul and Minneapolis ..........6 

Tacoma, W. T., City of ...--.--.-. 59- 

Tacoma : The Sovereign Mountain ....-..-. 57. 60 

Victoria, B. C. .....--..---- 71 

Washington Territory, Agricultural Capabilities of . . . - - . -51 

"Wheat Farms of Red River Valley --...----- 16 

Wrangell, Alaska .....-...---- 83 

Vakima Valley, W. T. ......-.---- 55 

Yellowstone National Park ._._--.--.- 26 

Yellowstone Valley ....... ...-. 21. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE- 

Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, Yellowstone National Park .... Frontispiece. 

Dining Car Interior on the Wonderland Route ...._... 8 

Sleeping Car Interior on the Wonderland Route ...... 14 

In the Yellowstone Valley - - - - - - - - - - .20 

Geysers and Falls in the Yellowstone National Park ....... 24 

Winter Scenes in the Yellowstone National Park ........ 28 

Hydraulic Mining ....---.--- 32 

Mission Mountains in the Flathead Country, M. T. ....... 40 

Thompson Falls and Scenery on Clark's Fork of the Columbia ..... 42 

Cabinet Gorge, Clark's Fork of the Columbia .... .... 44 

Lake Pend d'Oreille, I. T. ..-.----- • 46 

Switch-back Line over the Cascade Mountains, W. T 52 

Cougar Mountain, Green River, W. T. ......... 54 

Trout Fishing on Green River, W. T. ....-.--- 5^ 

Hotel Tacoma, Tacoma, W. T. ....-..-- - 58 

Mount Tacoma, W. T., as seen in August .......-- 62 

Oneonta Gorge, Columbia River, Oregon ....---- 66 

Puget Sound, W T. 70 

Fort Wrangell, Alaska - 78 

Alaskan Grave and Totem Poles at Fort Wrangell ....--- 82 

A Thlinket Family .........--- 84 

Juneau, Alaska ...-...------ 8() 

An Alaska Steamer approaching the Muir Glacier ....--- 88 

Indian River, Sitka, Alaska _..... ..---92- 




WonJeplansl. 




" Such is the patriot's boast where'er we roam : 
His first, best country ever is his own." 

^ RAVELING, some years ago, in the Rocky Mountains, Mr. 
Norman Lockyer met, to his great surprise, a venerable 
French Abb6, who, observing the astronomer's ill-concealed 
astonishment, proceeded to give the following explanation of 
his own presence in that far-off region: 

"Some months ago," he said, "I was very ill. My 
physicians gave me up, and one morning I seemed to faint 
and thought that I was already in the arms of the Bon Dieu, and I fancied the 
angels came and asked me, 'Well, M. I'Abbe, and how did you like the 
beautiful world you have just left?' And then it occurred to me that I who had 
been all my life preaching about heaven had seen almost nothing of the world 
in which I was living. I determined therefore, if it pleased Providence to spare 
me, to see something of this world; and so here I am." 

Now, if the American people, or such of them as have the means and 
leisure to travel, are not open to the reproach of caring nothing for the beauties 
and wonders of the world they live in, that they have sought them hitherto in 
the eastern rather than the western hemisphere is a fact too notorious to be 
called in question. It is doubtful whether, of the 25,000 Americans who 
visited Europe during the summer of 1887, one in a hundred had ever 
gazed upon the mysterious and awe-inspiring scenes of that greatest of the 
world's natural wonders, the Yellowstone National Park; or whether even 
one in a thousand had experienced that indescribable exaltation of feeling 
which takes possession of the traveler as he looks for the first time upon 
the mountains and glaciers of imperial Alaska. 

It may be that the stately cathedrals, crumbling abbeys and baronial halls of 
Merrie England ; the gayety of the capital of La Belle France ; the castled 
crags and historic cities of Der Vaterland ; the far-famed mountain scenery of 

(5) 



6 WONDERLAND. 

the Land of William Tell; the unique cities of sunny Italy; and even the 
antiquities of the Land of the Pharaohs, — have, notwithstanding three thousand 
miles of sundering ocean, been of easier access to the inhabitants of the New World 
than the incomparable natural wonders of their own far-extending domain. 
But, if this has been the case in the past, it is such no longer. By trains 
equipped with every convenience and luxury of modern travel, we can now 
journey to the very threshold of the enchanted land of geysers, cataracts and 
canons ; while we can also gaze upon arctic scenery in a temperate clime, as we 
sail the placid waters of the Inland Passage, in a steamer scarcely inferior in its 
appointments to the floating palaces of Long Island Sound. 

Henceforward, the American who goes to Europe without having seen the 
Yellowstone Region, the Columbia River, Puget Sound and Alaska, will have 
to be classed with those 75,000 people of Buffalo, who, according to a leading 
journal of that city, have never seen the world-renowned cataract of Niagara, 
though living within sound of its roar. 

The scenic wonders of the Northwest, though discovered only within the 
last few years, have already made the region in which they lie as famous among 
lovers of the sublime and beautiful in nature, the world over, as the recent 
marvelous development of its agricultural and other natural resources has 
rendered it in the world's markets and exchanges. While, as the present 
writer has elsewhere observed, old-world armies have been contending for 
the possession of narrow strips of territory, in kingdoms themselves smaller 
than many single American States, and venerable savants have been predicting 
the near approach of the time when the population of the world shall have 
outstripped the means of subsistence, there has arisen, between the headwaters 
of the Mississippi and the mouth of the stately Columbia, an imperial domain, 
more than three times the size of the German empire, and capable of sustain- 
ing upon its own soil one hundred millions of people. What the United States 
is to the world at large, this particular region is, in many respects, to the Great 
Republic itself; and its scenic attractions have this additional advantage over 
those of other parts of the country, that, traveling to them as he does, through 
the vast wheat fields of Minnesota and Dakota, the gold and silver ribbed 
mountains and rich pastures of Montana, and the forests, wheat fields and hop 
gardens of Washington, the tourist sees something of a section of country 
whose extraordinary productiveness has drawn upon it the attention of the 
whole civilized world, and led to the most remarkable movement of population 
witnessed in modern times. 

Unless he should travel by the Great Lakes to Duluth ; be returning to 
Europe or the Eastern States from Australia, China or Japan; or, for any reason 
whatever, should have traveled westward to the Pacific Coast by some other 
route, — the tourist will enter this remarkable region at the great twin cities of 
St. Paul and Minneapolis. 

It almost taxes one's powers of belief to be told that, thirteen years after the 
accession to the British throne of the gracious sovereign whose jubilee was 



WONDERLAND. 7 

recently celebrated, one of these now stately and flourishing cities was a little 
settlement with a population of only 840, and that the other had absolutely no 
existence ; but that they should have become what they are by a growth of less 
than forty years is even less wonderful than has been their expansion during the 
last decade. So recently as 1880, neither of them contained 50,000 inhabitants, 
or could take precedence of Hartford, Conn., Reading, Pa., or Nashville, Tenn. 

The beginning of the year 1888, however, finds them with a united popu- 
lation of fully 350,000, and a volume of trade that entitles them to rank among 
the greatest cities in the Union. The mileage of their tributary railroads, their 
banking capital and manufactures, as well as the outward and visible signs of 
their wealth and commercial importance, have all increased in corresponding 
ratio; and everything that Chicago has been to the Western States generally, 
St. Paul and Minneapolis now are to the 700,000 square miles of territory lying 
between the Great Lakes and Puget Sound. 

To the east-bound traveler over that great railroad system, the Northern 
Pacific, which alone traverses this region from end to end, a distance of nearly 
2,000 miles, they form a fitting climax to those gigantic operations in mining, 
lumbering, stock raising and agriculture, which, almost equally with the scenic 
wonders of the country, have excited his admiration and astonishment; while 
for the west-bound traveler they constitute an imperial gateway, a veritable Arc 
de Triomphe, upon whose twin columns he sees engraved the splendid achieve- 
ments of those who, alike on plain and mountain top, are engaged in subduing 
the refractory powers of Nature and despoiling of its vast and varied riches 
one of the greatest of her treasure houses. 

If St. Paul does not exactly answer to our ideas of a city set on a hill, its 
situation, upon a series of terraces rising from the left bank of the Mississippi 
River, is at once commanding and picturesque; and from its higher elevations, 
including the beautiful residential quarters of St. Anthony's Hill and Dayton's 
Bluff, there are always to be enjoyed magnificent views of the richly wooded 
valley beneath, that are among the most delightful reminiscences of a visit to 
this fine city. Situated on a great waterway and at the head of navigation, it 
has a river trade of considerable importance. It also enjoys whatever prestige 
attaches to the capital of a great State, while it is likewise the financial capital 
of the vast region lying to the west and northwest of it, and the focus of that 
extraordinary railway activity which is rapidly bringing every portion of that 
region into communication with the markets of the world. 

Few, perhaps, of the readers of this pamphlet would view with anything but 
dismay the prospect of visiting this city in mid-winter, so erroneous are the 
prevalent ideas with regard to the winter climate of the Northwest. One brief 
experience, however, would be sufficient to dispel all such mistaken notions, 
for the visitor would find, for the most part, clear skies, crisp snow, excellent 
sleighing, steady, dry, exhilarating cold, and during the months of January and 
February, an ice carnival eclipsing in brilliancy and gayety even that of the 
famous city on the St. Lawrence. 



8 WONDERLAND. 

Minneapolis is built on a broad esplanade on the right bank of the Missis- 
sippi, and there are not a few visitors who prefer its broad, Chicago-like streets to 
those of the more picturesque Capital City. Its chief pride and glory are the Falls 
of St. Anthony and those colossal flouring mills which are clustered around them. 

Time was when Chicago stood at the head of the wheat markets of the 
world; but while the wheat received by that city has fallen from 34,106,109 




DINING CAR INTERIOR ON THE WONDERLAND ROUTE. 

bushels, in 1879, to 21,476,016 bushels, in 1887, the amount handled by the mill- 
ers of Minneapolis has increased within the same period from 7,514,364 bushels 
to 46,026,120 bushels. 

On the left bank of the river is the famous Pillsbury "A" flouring mill, 
with a capacity of 6,200 barrels per day, the greatest in the world; while on 
the opposite bank are to be seen, among many others, those bearing the well- 



WONDERLAND. 9 

known name of Washburn; the whole capable of converting, daily, 180,000 
bushels of wheat into 36,000 barrels of flour, a flour-manufacturing capacity 
more than equal to the consumption of the three most populous States of the 
Union, or of one-half of the population of Great Britain. 

The busy toilers of these two great cities have an undoubted advantage 
over those of most other great centres of population in the generous provision 
made by nature for their physical recreation and enjoyment. It scarcely seems 
possible that it can be said of a State that is now leading the entire Union in 
the production of wheat, — not to mention its other enormous agricultural 
products, — that upward of one-half of its area is still covered with pine 
forests, and that it contains the extraordinary number of 10,000 lakes. Such, 
however, is the fact ; and of these latter, not a few of the most attractive 
are within easy reach of St. Paul and its sister city. The charming resorts of 
White Bear and Minnetonka, the latter justly famed for the beauty of its 
scenery and the luxuriousness of its hotels, are only a few miles distant. Prob- 
ably, however, the greatest local attraction to the tourist is the far-famed Falls 
of Minnehaha, immortalized by Longfellow. Situated almost midway between 
the two cities, they are accessible either by train, carriage, or river steamboat. 
To go by carriage is, however, the most satisfactory way to visit them, as the 
drive may conveniently be made to include the beautiful United States military 
post of Fort Snelling, which occupies a commanding situation at the confluence 
of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. 

Havmg concluded his brief visit to the dual capital of the Northwest, our 
traveler will be ready to set out upon his long trip over the Northern Pacific 
Railroad. Assuming St. Paul to be his starting point, the train by which he 
will travel will, almost immediately after leaving the great Union depot, with its 
300 passenger trains per day and its six miles of track, pass out of sight of the 
river, and bear off to the left, into that beautiful inter-urban district now so 
rapidly filling up. Passing the extensive State Fair grounds, with their imposing 
buildings, on the right, and Hamlme University on the left, he will, in a very few 
minutes, again come in sight of the Mississippi River, and cross from its left to 
its right bank, with the more important of the great flouring mills in full view. 

Leaving Minneapolis, he will once more cross the river to its left bank, which 
the line will follow for the next 125 miles, though separated from the river, 
except at Elk River and St. Cloud, by a stretch of prairie and woodland, inter- 
spersed with wheat and corn fields, too considerable to admit of the traveler 
getting more than an occasional glimpse of its waters, flowing, as they do, in a 
deep channel fringed with timber. Forty-nine miles from St. Paul, Big Lake is 
passed on the right, and, fifteen miles farther. Clear Lake on the left. These, 
however, are but "prairie lakes," and by no means fair representatives of the 
beautiful lake scenery that has given this State so great a reputation. Presently 
the spires of St. Cloud are seen rising beyond the mass of dark foliage that 
lines the river. This beautiful city, with its elm and maple shaded streets, is 
the judicial seat of its county; its manufacturing industries are of considerable 



10 WONDERLAND. 

importance, and it is the shipping and distributing point for an extensive tract 
of rich and well-settled farming country. 

A sharp bend in the river brings it into immediate proximity to the railway, 
at the town of Sauk Rapids. For a moment we see our train reflected in its 
waters; but its winding course soon carries it away, until another sweep once 
more reveals it rolling silently along, and our thoughts revert to the busy 
levees of New Orleans, 2,300 miles away, where dark-skinned stevedores toil 
with the cotton and the sugar. 

In another hour we come upon the pleasant town of Little Falls, built on a 
level stretch of prairie, lying between the railway and the river, and possessing 
one of the three important natural water-powers on the Upper Mississippi. 
From this point there goes off to the left the Little Falls and Dakota division 
of the great railway system on which we are traveling. On this branch are 
situated two of the best agricultural towns in the State, Sauk Centre and Morris. 
Its chief interest for the tourist, however, lies in the fact that a run of sixty miles 
would bring him to Glenwood, a charming village situated on one of the most 
beautiful lakes in the State. This is Lake Minnewaska, an extensive sheet of 
clear water, abounding with pickerel, whitefish and bass, and surrounded with a 
pebbly beach and a beautiful border of timber. Report says that in May, 1887^ 
three visitors to Glenwood caught in a few hours 75 pickerel, 18 black bass and 
a number of other species, making in all 120 fish; and that two days later a party 
of six secured in a single day's sport 120 pickerel, 29 black bass and 23 pike. 

The train stopping only at the more important stations, it is not long before 
it reaches Brainerd, the City of the Pines. While the building of extensive 
railroad machine shops has given a great impetus to the growth of this city, 
it has by no means deprived it of its natural attractions. Within a radius of 
fifteen miles are many lakes, abounding with the choicest varieties of fish; 
while at no great distance the sportsman will find the finest deer hunting in the 
entire State. 

The traveler may be surprised to learn that it is only from this point onward 
that his journey lies over the main line of the Northern Pacific Railroad. 
Although the offices of the company are situated at St. Paul, and the through 
trains to and from the Pacific Coast make that city their eastern terminus, the 
main line really extends westward from Duluth, at the head of 

LAKE SUPERIOR. 

Duluth is a city of so much interest in itself, besides having various 
attractive points within easy reach of it, that the tourist may feel disposed to 
take advantage of connecting trains to pay it a brief visit ; or he may have 
traveled from the East by the Lake route, in which case it will be the initial 
point of his overland journey. 

While there must be many who have forgotten the precise circumstances 
under which the Hon. Proctor Knott, of Kentucky, delivered, in the House of 



WONDER LAND. 1 1 

Representatives, in February, 187 1, his famous speech on Duluth, every one 
knows with what a torrent of ridicule he overwhelmed the measure then under 
the consideration of the House. That remarkable oratorical effort having 
recently been reprinted by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, with 
interlineations, showing the present condition of the trade and commerce of 
this now flourishing city, it will be sufficient to state that while it was, up to five 
years ago, a straggling village of no commercial importance, it is now almost as 
formidable a rival of Minneapolis, at least as a wheat market, as that city is of 
Chicago. Mammoth elevators rise on every hand ; its docks and wharves are 
crowded with shipping; and, when the visitor looks down upon it from the high 
ridge on whose southern slope it is built, he hardly knows whether to admire 
the more the beautiful picture spread out before him, or those evidences of com- 
mercial activity which are already justifying the prediction that the excellent 
harbor which forms the most westerly point of the most westerly of the great 
chain of lakes is destined to be surrounded by one of the greatest commercial 
cities on the continent. Duluth has unexcelled hotel accommodations and a 
delightful summer climate. It offers, also, such other advantages to the artist, 
the geologist, the angler, the sportsman and the health-seeker, as cannot fail 
to insure its continued growth in popularity. 

The neighboring cities of Superior and West Superior, in Wisconsin, also 
possess excellent terminal facilities, which will doubtless insure to them no 
small share of that enormous grain, lumber, coal and other trade which, in 
annually increasing volume, must pay tribute on transshipment at the head of 
the lake. 

A daily service of through trains connects Duluth, Superior and West 
Superior with the fashionable summer resort of Ashland, at which point the 
Northern Pacific trains connect with those of the Wisconsin Central and Mil- 
waukee, Lake Shore & Western Railways for Chicago and the East. This 
beautiful little city occupies a commanding situation overlooking Chequamegon 
Bay. It has one of the largest hotels in the Northwest, and there is much to 
interest and delight the traveler, the far-famed Apostle Islands guarding the 
entrance to the bay, while the teeming waters of the lake and the innumerable 
trout streams that discharge themselves into it, as well as the deer-haunted 
forests that encircle it, afford unlimited sport for the angler and lover of the 
chase. 

The most famous of the various trout streams is the Bois Brule, popularly 
known as the Brule, which is crossed by the line of the Northern Pacific 
Railroad at a point almost equidistant between Ashland and Duluth. A sports- 
man's hotel has Been erected close to the station, and its limited accommoda- 
tions are taxed to the utmost during the season. Only an ardent disciple of 
Izaak Walton can understand the enthusiasm to which anglers visiting this 
beautiful spot are wrought up. The river, a stream of clear, cold water, 
approaching one hundred feet in breadth, flows, for almost its entire length, 
through one of the great pine forests of Wisconsin. With its high banks and 



12 WONDERLAND. 

free from low or marshy ground, it is an ideal trout stream. The best fishing 
is to be had in a stretch of fourteen miles, extending six miles above and eight 
miles below the crossing of the Northern Pacific Railroad. In the early part 
of the season the fish weigh from one-half pound to one pound each, but in 
July and August catches of three and four-pound trout are an every-day occur- 
rence. In the surrounding forests, moose, deer, beaver and pheasant are found 
in great abundance, and the shipments of venison during the early winter are 
very large. Pike Lake, four miles east of Brule, is a beautiful sheet of water, 
teeming with the voracious fish from which it takes its name. Here, also, fair 
accommodations are to be obtained. 

Returning to Duluth, we once more resume our journey toward the land 
■of the setting sun. The line to Brainerd follows, for many miles, the winding 
valley of the St. Louis River, amid scenery for the most part stern and wild, 
yet not without an occasional suggestion of the gentler beauty of the far-off 
Alleghanies. Between Fond du Lac and Thompson, the river has a descent of 
500 feet in a distance of twelve miles, tearing its way with terrific force through 
a tortuous, rock-bound channel, at many points of which are stratified rocks of 
an interesting character, some of them turned on edge. The best point 
for observing the fine effect of these impetuous rapids and cascades, known 
locally as the Dalles of the St. Louis, is between Greeley and Thompson, and 
near the twentieth mile-post westward from Duluth. Onward to Brainerd, 
the line traverses thick forests, abounding with deer, bear, wolves and var- 
ious other game. The little settlements passed at remote intervals depend 
almost entirely upon one or another of the various branches of the lumber 
industry. 

The Official Guide to the Northern Pacific Railroad, published by Riley 
Brothers, of St. Paul, and sold by the news agents on the trains, gives con- 
siderably more information relative to this and other sections traversed by the 
railroad than can possibly be embodied in this pamphlet, designed, as it is, to 
serve, within less than one hundred pages, the double purpose of a handbook 
for the traveler, and a not-too-detailed setting-forth of the general attractions 
of the Northwest, for those who, previous to taking it up, had never, possibly, 
entertained the least idea of visiting it. 

Continuing our journey, we enter that most beautiful section of the State 
known as the 

LAKE PARK REGION, 

with its richly diversified and in every way most charming scenery. Before 
reaching Detroit, which may be regarded as its metropolis, we pass the 
attractive little town of Wadena, the eastern terminus of the Fergus Falls 
and Black Hills Branch. 

This line runs through Fergus Falls, a flourishing town with some impor- 
tant manufactories, and Wahpeton, an agricultural centre of some note, on 
the Dakota side of the Red River. It leads also to the pretty little village of 



WONDERLAND. 13 

Battle Lake, deriving its name from the large and beautiful sheet of water 
on which it is situated. There are no fewer than sixteen other lakes and lake- 
lets within five miles of this charming resort, their various waters teeming with 
the choicest varieties of finny game, and their shores haunted by water fowl in 
great numbers. 

A well-deserved tribute to the excellence of the Battle Lake fishing grounds 
appeared in the American Angler of June ii, 1887, where, after chronicling 
the success met with by a party of six gentlemen who caught 600 wall-eyed 
pike and pickerel between 9.00 a. m. and 8.30 p. m., it is stated that, " instead 
of decreasing, the fish in the Battle Lake waters have increased to such an 
extent that, on a fair day, bass and pike can be seen lying at the bottom of the 
lake by thousands," and also that "at the lower, or eastern, end of the lake, the 
black bass are so numerous that a man has hardly time to put a new bait on 
one hook before another fish has grabbed the second." Four weeks later, the 
same journal recorded the fact of three gentlemen from Kansas City having 
caught, in one afternoon, 144 wall-eyed pike, seventeen pickerel and seven dog- 
fish, weighing, in all, 817 pounds. About the same date another party visited 
the fishing grounds about two miles east of the boat-house, and caught in two 
hours 144 black bass and a large quantity of rock bass. 

Returning to Wadena, we continue our journey to Detroit, a beautiful little 
city, equally attractive to the angler, the sportsman, the health-seeker and the 
mere votary of country pleasures. The accomplished editor of the American 
Angler, writing in his well-known journal, after a recent tour in the North- 
west, stated that during a life of nearly a quarter of a century as an angler, 
no experience with the rod had equaled, in variety and weight, the two days' 
fishing he had had on Detroit Lake. Nor was Mr. Harris' success exceptional. 
A score of 100 pounds per day, on two rods, is, as he goes on to say, consid- 
ered quite a modest record. Eastern anglers certainly have no conception how 
full of fine fish, of many varieties, these Minnesota lakes are. For black and 
rock bass, mascalonge, pickerel, wall-eyed pike, and an infinite variety of 
smaller fish, a recent writer in the American Angler pronounces Detroit Lake 
"the finest fishing ground on the continent." In another recent issue of the 
same journal, Mr. Harris refers to Detroit Lake as "the famed home of the 
black bass and pike (pickerel)," while, in yet another, a visitor declares that "a 
mere novice in the art of fishing can take all the fish he may desire, without 
any aid or skill," and that it is considered " no good day if one cannot score 
from 50 to 100 pounds of fish each day." 

There are perhaps few things more unreasonable than the universal inclina- 
tion to discount everything in the nature of a "fish story;" for, if there is one 
department of human experience in which, above all others, "truth is stranger 
than fiction," it is in the achievements of the gentle angler. Nothing, for 
example, is further removed from all possibility of mistake or exaggeration 
than the fact that three recent visitors to Detroit took in, as the result of less 
than three days' work, 603 pike, i;?8 black bass, 178 rock bass. 28 catfish. 



14 



WONDERLAND. 



and 25 pickerel, the entire catch weighing 2,321 pounds, or nearly 300 pounds 
per day for each man. 

The Hotel Minnesota, which occupies a beautiful situation overlooking the 
lake, is declared on the highest authority to be "a gem of a hostelry for 
anglers," every convenience they could wish for being obtainable at moderate 
charges. The scenic attractions of this locality are likewise of no common 




SLEEPING CAR INTERIOR ON THE WONDERLAND ROUTE. 



order, the natural features of the surrounding country being of the most 
diversified character. So pure and invigorating also is the atmosphere that hay 
fever and malarial diseases are absolutely unknown. Among various pleasant 
excursions for which Detroit is a convenient centre is that to White Earth 
Indian Reservation, twenty miles distant. Another, and one in great favor with 
canoeists, is afforded by the long chain of lakes which, with short and easy 
portages, extends southward almost to Fergus Falls. Thirteen miles west is 



WONDERLAND. 15 

Lake Park, another charming resort, havhig good fishing, a delightful climate, 
and all the various other attractions common to the district. 

Another half-hour's ride, and we are at Winnipeg Junction, from which point 
a branch known as the Duluth and Manitoba line has recently been constructed 
northward to the international boundary, there to connect with a line to be built 
by the Provincial Government of Manitoba. This branch passes through 
Grand Forks, one of the largest and most prosperous towns in the entire 
Territory of Dakota, the country tributary to it being among the most product- 
ive in this proverbially rich and fertile region. North of Grand Forks, this 
important branch passes through the prosperous little city of Grafton, the 
judicial seat and principal shipping point of the rich county of Walsh, and 
also through the rapidly growmg town of Drayton, terminating in the old city 
of Pembina, which has shown wonderful vitality since it was brought within 
this great railroad system. 

We are now approaching the western boundary of the State, here formed by 
the famous Red River of the North, whose fringe of timber appears as a dark 
line on the horizon for almost a full hqur before the sluggish waters of the river 
come into view. 

Before entering the Territory of Dakota, now lying before us, it may be 
well to cast a retrospective glance at the marvelous development of which it 
has been the scene during an astonishingly brief period of time. Beginning 
no further back than 1861, we see it first organized as a Territory, in which were 
included the whole of Eastern Montana and a portion of what is now 
Wyoming, its entire population numbering less than 3,000. The United States 
census of 1870 found it with its area reduced to its present limits, and with 
a population of 12,887, mainly settled in the southeastern part of the Territory, 
along the Missouri River. The next decade saw the beginning of a truly 
marvelous transformation; and by the summer of 1880 its population had 
increased to 135,180, of whom 51,793 were of foreign birth. But, rapid as was 
the increase of the Territory in population and corresponding production from 
1877 to 1880, its growth since the beginning of the present decade has far 
exceeded the largest expectations that its earlier progress, marvelous though it 
was, would at all have justified. Already its 135,180 inhabitants in 1880 have 
become 575,000; the 7,352,589 bushels of cereals have grown to 141,058,031 
bushels, 62,553,499 bushels of which represent its wheat crop for 1887 
(exceeding by one-half that of any other State or Territory) ; its six national 
and eighteen private banks have increased to no fewer than 318; its 698 miles 
of railroad have multiplied six-fold, so that they already exceed the mileage 
of twenty-six States of the Union; while the limited provision then made for 
the education of the young is lost in the 3,856 public schools now in operation. 

These astonishing facts, however, but faintly foreshadow what coming years 
will witness. The historian Alison, writing in 1828, likened the gradual and con- 
tinuous progress of the European race toward the Rocky Mountains to a deluge 
of men, rising unabatedly, and daily driven onward by the hand of God. But, 



16 WONDERLAND. 

at that time, the State of Illinois, but half-way toward the Rocky Mountains, and 
one-third of the way to the Pacific Ocean, was almost the limit of its mighty flow. 
Wisconsin, with no noteworthy settlements of its own, formed part of the 
Territory of Michigan; Iowa was an altogether vacant region, without any 
form of organized government ; while other great States of to-day were still either 
mere parts of the Louisiana Purchase, with no separate identity, or were com- 
prised within the then far-extending territory of the Republic of Mexico. 

But in the settlement of various sections of the Great West, history repeats 
itself, and the experience of one is the experience of all. No one could, 
five short years ago, have predicted that the year 1887 would witness, in North 
Dakota, such splendid achievements as are here related, without exciting 
more or less merriment ; but, in view of what has already been done, it is 
surely against the man who would doubt that the near future will see all this 
multiplied seven-fold that the laugh will now be turned. So enormous is the 
area available for agricultural purposes, that, were the whole of this great 
region capable of being brought into view at one time, even those vast wheat 
fields, whose fame has traveled so far, would be seen to cover but a small part 
of its immense expanse. 

The population of the Territory, moreover, is still less than four to the square 
mile, as against 221 in Massachusetts ; and it will have to number more than 
three million souls before it equals in density even that of the sparsely popu- 
lated State of Maine. 

Where the railroad crosses the Red River, there have sprung up two impor- 
tant cities, Moorhead, in Minnesota, and Fargo, in Dakota. As the point from 
which the great tide of immigration that poured into the Territory in 1882 dis- 
tributed itself over the surrounding country, Fargo acquired a prestige and 
laid the foundations of a commercial greatness that have since been largely 
increased by its becoming a railroad centre of some importance, as well as by the 
gradual bringing under cultivation of the rich country naturally tributary to it. 
Its fine brick business blocks and other buildings would do credit to cities ten 
times its size, as would also its water-works and its telephonic and electric light 
systems, which are among the most complete and efficient anywhere to be found. 

Scarcely have we resumed our journey before we are looking out upon those 
vast wheat fields which have earned for this portion of the Territory the desig- 
nation of the 

GRANARY OF THE WORLD. 

At Dalrymple, eighteen miles from Fargo, and at Castleton, two miles 
farther west, are the great wheat farms of Mr. Oliver Dalrymple, comprising 
some 50,000 acres. 

The gigantic scale upon which wheat growing is here carried on is well- 
nigh incredible to any one familiar only with the more limited operations 
obtaining in the older States. Before harvest operations begin, the eye wanders 
over an apparently illimitable field of golden grain ; and, when the long proces- 



WONDERLAND. 17 

sion of reaping machines moves out, the traveler, be he ever so unimpressionable, 
cannot but be profoundly moved, as he sees the ingathering, on so prodigious 
a scale, of the food of toiling millions in the great cities of the world. 

Passing various healthy-looking little settlements, the train presently runs 
down into the valley of the James, or Dakota, River, said to be the longest 
unnavigable river on the continent, its flow for hundreds of miles being distin- 
guished by scarcely any perceptible increase of volume. P^oni the attractive 
and flourishing little city of Jamestown, which has sprung up here, branch 
lines extend northward ninety miles, to Minnewaukan, and southward si.\ty- 
nine miles, to Oakes. The terminus of the former is situated on Devil's Lake» 
a remarkable body of salt water about 45 miles in length, and from a few 
hundred yards to seven miles in width. The attractions of its shores for the 
tourist, angler and sportsman, are of no common order, its scenery l)eing 
picturesque, its climate salubrious, fish and game plentiful, and its hotel 
accommodations comfortable, if not lu.xurious. On its south shore is the 
United States military post of Fort Totten, adjoining a small Indian reser- 
vation. 

It may be stated in this connection that one of the special attractions of 
North Dakota for the sportsman is to be found in the innumerable flocks of 
wild geese that fly southward in the fall. An interesting article on this subject 
appeared in the American Field of March 12, 1SS7, entitled "Goose Shooting 
on Dakota stubbles." The sportsman cannot do wrong in establishing his 
temporary headquarters at any of the larger settlements along the line, and he 
will always find station agents, hotel keepers, and local sportsmen prepared lo 
give him all the information and assistance in their power. 

At La Moure, a substantial town on the branch extending southward, con- 
nection is made with another important branch extending south west ward from 
Fargo. The latter has, at the present writing, its terminus at Edgeley, and is 
especially noteworthy on account of its traversing the largest body of unoccu- 
pied land adapted to wheat raising, east of the Missouri River. 

Between the valleys of the James and Missouri Rivers, here about 100 miles 
apart, there is a high table-land, 1,850 feet above sea-level, 450 feet above the 
station at Jamestown, and about 250 feet above the Missouri River at low 
water, and known geographically as the Coteaux de Missouri. It extends north- 
ward far into the British possessions, and is pronounced by Dr. G. M. Dawson, 
the eminent Canadian geologist, one of the most remarkable results of glacial 
action on the American continent. Several large and well-managed farms 
attract the traveler's attention as the train carries him t)ver this great plateau, 
and down to the valley of the Missouri, on whose left bank, 195 miles west of 
Fargo, the train stops for a few moments at Bismarck, the capital of the 
Territory. 

The great river and its tributaries have no less than two thousand miles 
of navigable waters above 'his point, and Bismarck, while yet a small city, 
enjoyed, for some years, an extensive river trade with the different settlements 



18 WONDERLAND. 

lying to the Northwest; as much as 45,000,000 pounds of freight having been 
transported in a single brief season of navigation. The removal of the seat of 
Territorial government from Yankton to this more central and progressive city, 
and the gradual settling-up of the fine agricultural country tributary to it, have 
greatly stimulated its growth, and it now presents quite an imposing appear- 
ance, as it gently rises from the level of the railroad, with Capitol Hill and 
its fine group of government buildings surmounting it on the north. 

Quietly drawing out of the station, the train gradually approaches that 
magnificent bridge by which the railroad is carried over the muddy waters of 
the Missouri River. Even though he should cross it during the dry season, the 
traveler can scarcely fail to be impressed with the breadth and volume of this 
great river, which is here 2,800 feet from bank to bank, although 2,000 miles 
from its confluence with the Mississippi and 3,500 miles from the ocean. The 
bridge, which is of immense strength, but not more substantial than it is grace- 
ful, consists of three spans, each of 400 feet, and two approach spans, each of 
113 feet, with a long stretch of strongly built trestle-work at its western approach. 

Across the river, the train runs into the pleasant little city of Mandan, 
situated in the midst of a grassy plain, that is really an expansion of the Heart 
River Valley. Mandan has an extensive trade with the country naturally tribu- 
tary to it, and is the eastern and western terminus, respectively, of the Missouri 
and Dakota Divisions of the railroad. In its vicinity are some interesting pre- 
historic mounds, the partial exploration of which has brought to light a large 
quantity of human bones of extraordinary size, mixed with beautiful specimens of 
broken pottery, as well as vases of various bright colors, filled with flints and 
agates. The train stopping at Mandan twenty minutes, the tourist can spend a 
little time very pleasantly in the Indian Bazaar of Messrs. W. S. Barrows & Co., 
which opens on to the station platform. He will find there one of the largest 
and finest collections of game heads, horns and Indian curiosities in the entire 
West. 

Resuming his journey, he can scarcely fail to be struck with the very different 
appearance presented by the country from that through which he has been 
passing since he emerged from the Lake Park region of Minnesota on to the 
broad and level or, at most, gently undulating prairie. He no longer looks out 
upon immense wheat fields, stretching away as far as the eye can reach, or upon 
bright, grassy plains, flecked with the rich and varied colors of innumerable wild 
flowers. On the contrary, the country is decidedly hilly, often breaking into 
abrupt bluffs. Its magnificent agricultural capabilities have, however, been fully 
proved by the settlers who have taken up their residence within it, and who, by 
the way, enjoy many advantages that are denied to dwellers on the prairie, 
among which may be mentioned an abundance of cheap fuel, building stone, 
limestone, brick and clay, and also a somewhat earlier spring. The most 
important settlements in this region are New Salem, from which an exceptionally 
fine agricultural country extends northward to the Knife River Valley; Sims, 
where 250 tons of lignite coal of excellent quality are mined daily; Hebron, a 



WONDERLAND. 19 

beautifully situated settlement, founded by the Evangelical Colonization Society 
of Chicago, and rapidly increasing in population ; Gladstone, founded by a 
colony from Ripon, Wisconsin, and named in honor of the great English states- 
man; and Dickinson, the most important of them all, having extensive ship- 
ments, both of cattle and agricultural produce. Twenty-four miles south of the 
last-named point, a New England colony, chiefly from Vermont, was established 
on well-selected farming lands, in the beautiful valley of the Cannon Ball 
River, during the summer of 1887. 

The appearance at intervals of large herds of cattle will indicate to the 
traveler that he is entering the 

GREAT STOCK REGION 

of the Northwest. It may be well to state in this connection that the serious 
losses sustained by the stock growers of this region during the winter of 1886-87, 
were due, not to any exceptional severity of the weather, but to the fact that the 
prolonged drought and extensive prairie fires of the preceding summer had 
destroyed almost entirely the grass upon which the cattle should have subsisted 
during the winter. Notwithstanding that so much has been written with a view 
to the removal of the widespread misconception that exists with regard to the 
northwestern winter, the idea that it is one of almost arctic severity is clung to 
so tenaciously, that statements of which the very air must be weary have to be 
reiterated again and again. Once more, therefore, let it be declared that so long 
as cattle have a plentiful supply of the highly nutritious native grasses of the 
country, they can stand almost any degree of cold without serious suffering or 
loss of flesh ; that the snowfall between the Red River and the Rocky Mount- 
ains is considerably less than it is in Iowa or northern Illinois; and that even 
the lowest temperatures that obtain in this region cause much less inconvenience 
and suffering than does a temperature of zero in the latitude of Chicago, in 
accordance with the well-known law of nature that cold, dry air abstracts heat 
from the body much less rapidly than cold, moist air. This last-named fact 
some extraordinarily " smart " man may be disposed to look upon as an 
ingenious device of the boomer to beguile the unwary. It may therefore be 
well to add that the law has been reduced to a mathematical formula, and that 
it has been ascertained that in the time that it would take a perfectly dry 
atmosphere to reduce the temperature of the human body eight degrees, 
exposure to air of the same temperature, but fully saturated with moisture, would 
reduce it no less than thirty-three degrees. Apropos of the comparatively light 
snowfall, it may be stated that the various stage lines connecting the railroad 
with more or less distant settlements have been known not to miss a single trip 
or to be more than a few hours late, during an entire winter. 

For 1 20 miles westward from Mandan, the line traverses the valley of the Heart 
River. Twenty miles west of Dickinson it enters the singular and picturesque 
region known as the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri, — not, as might be sup- 
posed, from their unfitness for agricultural or stock-raismg purposes, but 




IN THE YELLOWSTONE VALLEY. 



C^O) 



WONDERLAND. 21 

from the designation bestowed upon them by the early French voyageurs, who 
described them as mauvaiscs ter res pour traverser. 

Our approach to this unique section of country is announced by the occa- 
sional appearance of a conical butte, whose stratifications exhibit considerable 
variety of color. These increase in frequency, until, at last, we suddenly find 
ourselves surrounded by scenery of the most extraordinary character, the entire 
face of the country being broken up into domes, pyramids, mimic castles and 
other architectural forms, whose weird and fantastic appearance is not a little 
heightened by the wealth of color in which they are arrayed. Composed 
largely of clay solidified by pressure, they are in various stages of conversion 
into terra cotta, by the slow combustion of underlying masses of lignite, and it 
is to the clay, baked and unbaked, the coal of unequal ({uality and the vegetation 
not altogether absent from their slopes, that they are indebted for the vivid 
and startling contrasts of color they present. The almost Plutonic appearance 
of the scene is contributed to, also, by huge petrifactions and vast masses of 
scoria, and still more by the fire which, at various points, is seen issuing from 
the ground, and the smoke that proceeds from it. Notwithstanding all this, 
however, thousands of cattle may, at certain seasons of the year, be seen 
grazing on the rich grasses of its valleys and ravmes. From Medora excursions 
may be made to Cedar Cafion, one of the most interesting localities m the Bad 
Lands, and the burning mme, perhaps the most extensive of the various sub- 
terranean fires of this extraordinary region. 

Sixteen miles beyond the Little Missouri, we pass Sentinel Butte, a lofty 
peak rising precipitously from the plain ; and m a few minutes more our atten- 
tion is arrested by a tall pole, surmounted by a handsome pair of antlers, which 
serves to mark the boundary between Dakota and Montana. Here we are at 
an elevation of 2,840 feet above sea-level, the highest point we have yet attained. 
In crossing the great Territory of Dakota, we have traveled as far as from New 
York to Petersburg, Va., or from Boston or Providence to Montreal. In travers- 
ing that of Montana, we perform a journey almost equal to the distance from 
New York to Indianapolis. Such are the dimensions of the future great States 
of the Northwest ! We are now approaching — 

" That desolate land and lone 
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone 
Roar down their mountain path." 

Forty miles west of the Territorial boundary, we come to Glendive, an 
important centre of the grazing industry, and a divisional terminus of the rail- 
road. We are now in the far-famed Yellowstone Valley, whose various 
windings we shall follow, more or less closely, for the next 340 miles. As is 
the case with the other great geographic il divisions into which the enormous 
stretch of country traversed by the Northern Pacific Railroad naturally falls, 
this valley would itself afford sufficient material for a volume of no incon- 
siderable size ; and it is only by reason of the limited space at his disposal, that 
the writer has to pass rapidly from one principal point of interest to another, 



23 WONDERLAND. 

leaving the traveler to discover for himself the minor natural features, 
the social conditions, agricultural methods, and whatever else is peculiar 
to the country or its inhabitants. 

Of the valley itself, it may be said briefly that it varies from five to ten 
miles in width, and that it is inclosed by high bluffs of clay and sandstone, 
whose curious forms occasionally remind one of the Bad Lands, though lacking 
in color; and of the river, that its waters, save when swollen by heavy rain, or by 
the melting of the snow on the mountains, are, unlike those of the Missouri, 
bright and clear ; and that it has many important affluents, whose fertile and 
beautiful valleys are the chosen locations of fortunate ranchmen, and the feed- 
ing grounds of their flocks and herds. 

Miles City, 78 miles west of Glendive, was, in days gone by, the principal 
rendezvous of the hunter, and as many as 250,000 buffalo hides have been 
shipped east from this point in a single season. In those days its gambling 
houses were in full swing day and night, Sunday and week-day, and its by no 
means sparsely tenanted cemetery contained the graves of only three persons 
who had not met violent deaths. Now, however, all this is changed, albeit this 
is the land of the cowboy, an enfant terrible to those who know him only from 
sensational newspaper paragraphs, but a gallant, generous and not unfrequently 
scholarly fellow to those thrown into immediate contact with him. The recent 
development of the grazing industry in western Dakota and eastern Montana 
has been not less remarkable than that of wheat raising on the Dakota prairies, 
and the economist who should turn to the United States census reports of i88o. 
for the present condition of this region would be led seriously astray. In 1880, 
Montana contained 490,000 cattle and 502,000 sheep. According to a recent 
report of the Governor of the Territory, it now contains 1,600,000 cattle and 
horses, and upward of 2,000,000 sheep, and this, notwithstanding the serious 
losses of the winter of 1886-87. 

Leaving Miles City, with its handsome groves of Cottonwood and the sub- 
stantial brick business blocks which have taken the place of the log huts and 
hastily-built frame shanties of which it consisted when the writer first visited it 
in the spring of 1882, we cross the Tongue River, and in a few minutes are 
passing Fort Keogh, one of the largest and most beautiful military posts in the 
entire country. 

There are but few Indians now to be seen along the line of the railroad, and 
those are engaged in agricultural and industrial pursuits. The extinction of the 
buffalo has rendered the Indian much more amenable to the civilizing influences 
brought to bear upon him than he formerly was, and very fair crops of grain 
are being raised at some of the agencies. At the Devil's Lake agency, for 
example, 60,000 bushels of wheat have been raised by the Indians in a single 
season, and purchased by the Government at %i per 100 pounds. The Crows, 
along the northern border of whose reservation — nearly as large as the State of 
Massachusetts — the railroad runs for 200 miles, are said to be the richest nation 
mthe world m proportion to their numbers, their wealth aggregating $3,500 per 



WONDERLAND. 23 

head. This, however, is due to the natural increase of their live stock, 
consisting chiefly of ponies, rather than to their own industry and thrift. 
Their great reservation is probably the garden spot of Montana, and the throw- 
ing open of a large portion of it to settlement, which cannot long be delayed, 
will assuredly give an immense impetus to the agricultural interests of the 
Territory. 

It does not require a large population in a country like this to make a town 
that shall dominate a very extensive region, and we have in Billings, which 
next calls for notice, a little city, with not more than 3,000 inhabitants, but the 
metropolis, nevertheless, of a region larger than Maine, South Carolina, West 
Virginia or Indiana. An important shipping point for cattle, and distributing 
point for eastern manufactured products, it has two of the most important 
mining districts in the Territory tributary to it, while it has coal of a good quality 
within a short distance, and likewise excellent sandstone. 

From Laurel, thirteen miles west of Billings, a line is now in course of con- 
struction to Cooke City, in the famous Clark's Fork mining district. This 
branch is being built chiefly for the transportation of the large silver product of 
that rich district, and the very fine bituminous coal found in such abundance on 
the Rocky Fork of the Yellowstone. It will, however, possess extraordinary 
attractions for the tourist, traversing, as it will, some of the most magnificent 
scenery in the entire Rocky Mountain range, including a canon whose precipi- 
tous walls have been estimated by a recent visitor, familiar with other famous 
canons, to be 5,000 feet in perpendicular height. Reference is made to this 
cafion in a long and most interesting article by Rev. W. S. Rainsford, D. D., 
which appeared in Scribiiers Magazvie for September, 1887, entitled " Camping 
and Hunting in the Shoshone." The writer of this article gives an exceedingly 
graphic account of various hunting adventures in this wild and beautiful 
country, together with an immense amount of information that cannot but be 
of the utmost value to all lovers of the chase. 

Passing Springdale, where the traveler will see hacks in waiting to 
convey visitors to Hunter's Hot Springs (for further information concerning 
which the reader is referred to an advertisement accompanying the Railroad 
Company's time tables), the train approaches, amidst scenery increasing in 
grandeur, the little city of Livingston, the starting point for the rich carbonate 
mines of Castle Mountain, forty miles north, and also one of the most impor- 
tant points in the operation of the railroad, but of far greater note as the gate- 
way to the world-renowned Yellowstone National Park. Here we leave the 
elegant drawing-room sleeping car and the lu.xurious dining car of the great 
through train, to travel by a connecting branch train the few miles that still 
separate us from the actual boundary of the Park ; and, while the traveler who 
knows not the delights of what good old Izaak Walton called the most calm, 
quiet and innocent of all recreations, takes a brief stroll through the town, fol- 
lowers of the gentle craft may further acquaint themselves with those extraor- 
dinary 




GEYSERS AND FALLS IN THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 



(24) 



WONDERLAND. 25 



ATTRACTIONS FOR THE ANGLER 

which have rendered this locaUty so famous. They may even have the good 
fortune to run across the editor of the American Angler himself, who, too ardent 
a craftsman to shut himself up in his office on Broadway, frequently visits these 
and other fishing grounds along the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The 
country traversed by this road he has declared to be, " for the angler and 
sportsman, a succession of surprises and a string of successes, good bags and 
grand catches awaiting him at every stage of his progress ;" while he has else- 
where pronounced a visit to the Yellowstowe important to every angler who 
aspires to a well-rounded life as a rodster. But, should the angler visiting this 
district for the first time not have the good fortune to fall in with so eminent a 
member of the brotherhood, he will at least be able to obtain, from thoroughly 
trustworthy sources, information that will leave him in no doubt as to the foun- 
dation on which rest the possibly startling reports that have reached him as to 
the waters of the Yellowstone and its affluents. He will learn that the Yellow- 
stone, west of Billings, contains trout of four distinct varieties, including the 
celebrated cut-throat trout, to whose size and abundance Mr. Harris himself 
bears testimony ; that the individual scores of various tourists, reported in the 
American Angler during 1885, and not containing any that were phenomenally 
large, averaged twenty-five trout per hour, for each rod ; that during the same 
season a visitor caught twenty-one fine, large trout "after supper," while two 
others brought in 160 as the result of one day's sport ; and that during the 
season of 1887 a trout, seven and one-half pounds in weight, was caught in the 
river at the foot of Main Street. He will hear, probably, of the two gentlemen 
who, having seen the reports of fishing in these waters in the American Angler, 
stopped off for a day on their way to the Pacific coast, and were rewarded with 
no beautiful fish ; of the young lady from Helena who caught a five and one- 
half pound trout close to the city ; of the two local anglers who caught forty 
pounds' weight in an afternoon, and the two others who captured 134 trout in 
the same length of time. He will learn how that in August last two gentle- 
men from Wyandotte, Kan., caught twenty-seven pounds one day and forcy-six 
pounds the next ; how a visitor from Wichita, accompanied by one from Jack- 
sonville, 111., caught sixty-one fine trout in a day's fishing near Brisbin ; and 
that in June of the same year a lady and two gentlemen caught forty fine fish 
in Spring Creek, in one afternoon, one of them weighing three pounds, and 
three others two pounds each. All this, and more, will our inquiring friend be 
• told, and he will also learn of Rosebud Lake, a beautiful spot near Billings, 
where the trout fishing is declared to be " splendid ;" of Little Rosebud Creek, 
near Stillwater, where eighty-seven trout are reported to have been caught in 
four hours, with a single rod ; of Prior Creek, near Huntley ; Mission Creek, 
twelve miles east of Livingston, and various other resorts of local sportsmen. 
So fired, indeed, will be his enthusiasm, that it is more than likely that when his 



26 WONDERLAND. 

traveling companions are ready to continue their journey to the National Park, 
they will have to bid him a temporary adieu, and he will be found taking up his 
quarters at that handsome new hotel, the Albemarle, whose excellent accommo- 
dations contribute so largely to the attractiveness of this little city as a halting 
place. 

So far the tourist's interest has been excited chiefly by that marvelous trans- 
formation which, in so manifestly short a time, has been effected in the appear- 
ance of a large part of the country ; by the beauty and novelty of the prairie, 
whose illimitable expanse is as inspiring to the imagination as its atmosphere is 
physically exhilarating ; and by the Bad Lands, which also will have produced 
upon his mind an impression that will never pass away. Now, however, he is 
on the confines of the mountain world, and almost within sight of the very 
sanctuary of its tutelary genius. At Livingston he is 4,488 feet above sea-level, 
or 208 feet higher than Mount Mansfield, and 684 feet above the highest point 
of theCatskills. Already several magnificent peaks are in full view, and before 
long he himself will be a good half-mile of perpendicular height nearer the 
blue vault of heaven. 

Leaving the main line for the 

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 

branch, we have a fine view of the rugged and majestic Crazy Mountains to the 
north. Elk, in large bands, still haunt that noble range, and the American Field 
of January i, 1887, reported the shooting of twelve in two days by a local ranch- 
man. The same excellent journal recently contained an admirable series of 
articles from the pen of Lieut. J. M. T. Partello, U. S. A., entitled " Army 
Sports on the Frontier," which visiting sportsmen will do well to consult. 

A few minutes more and we enter the Third, or Lower, Caiion of the Yellow- 
stone, from which we presently emerge into a beautiful valley, some thirty miles 
long, with an average width of about ten miles. This ancient lake-bed — 
for such it is — is known as Paradise Valley, and so beautiful is the series of 
pictures it presents, that the visitor can scarcely be persuaded that still more 
magnificent scenery lies beyond. The indications of ancient volcanic action 
that here abound have been commented upon both by Dr. F. V. Hayden and 
Dr. Archibald Geikie. The commanding mountain which overlooks the valley 
on the east, is Emigrant's Peak (10,629 ft.), with the famous mining gulch, 
from which so much wealth has been extracted, lying under its northern slope. 
At Sphinx, named from a lofty peak whose rugged summit bears some fancied 
tesemblance to the well-known Egyptian monument, we enter the Second, or 
Middle, Cafion, which Dr. Hayden describes as possessing the most uniform 
and beautiful series of terraces he has seen anywhere in the West, while Dr. 
Geikie refers to the striking proofs it furnishes of the power and magnitude of 
the old glaciers, one of which, he says, must have completely filled the canon, and 
flowed over into the adjoining valleys, — to do which, it must have had a depth 



WONDERLAND. 27 

of fully 1, 600 feet. The railroad terminates at Cinnabar, under the shadow of 
the mountain of that name, remarkable for its exposure of vertical strata, of 
three distinct periods. Let not, however, the non-scientific reader labor for a 
moment under the delusion that the interest of this region is purely geological ; 
for not only is the scenery wild in the extreme, but it is of a novel and striking 
character. No visitor, for example, can ever forget the Devil's Slide, a singu- 
lar formation caused by the washing out of a vertical stratum of comparatively 
soft material, between one of quartzite and another of porphyry, which project- 
ing strata enclose, like walls, the almost perpendicular " slide," 2,000 feet 
high. 

At Cinnabar coaches are in waiting to convey us the remaining six miles to 
the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, the initial point in the Grand Tour of the 
Park, Among the many noble mountains which attract our attention as we 
proceed thither is Electric Peak (11,125 ^t.), so called from the fact of Mr. 
Henry Gannett, a member of Dr. A. C. Peale's exploring party of July, 1872, 
having been enveloped upon its slope in an electric cloud, with consequences 
far more amusing to his companions than agreeable to himself. The northern 
boundary of the Park is passed immediately south of the little village of Gardi- 
ner. Here, at last, we are in that enchanted region which contains, within its 
area of 3,675 square miles, a larger assemblage of varied natural wonders than 
are to be found within a like area anywhere else in the world ; and which, with 
well-deserved confidence in the almost entirely unsupported testimony and 
recommendations of Dr. F. V. Hayden, Congress, in 1872, wisely set apart for- 
ever for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. 

Within full view of the great hotel which is our first resting place and vir- 
tual headquarters, rise the wonderful terraces formed by the Mammoth Hot 
Springs, from which the hotel takes its name. The first view of this remark- 
able formation is not unlike that of the snout of a glacier, but nearer approach 
reveals a marvelous series of regular terraces, the margins of which are adorned 
with the most delicate fretwork, and the whole arrayed in exquisitely soft shades 
of color, surpassing in harmony and in subtle gradations any chromatic effects 
known to exist beyond the Hmits of this enchanted ground. 

The keenest interest of the newly-arrived tourist, however, invariably centres 
in those mysterious manifestations of subterranean energy, the geysers ; and it 
is therefore with the liveliest expectations of enjoyment that he sets out, usually 
on the day following that of his arrival, to visit the various geyser basins, the 
Great Falls, Grand Caiion, and other points of interest in this veritable wonder- 
land. Proceeding by the new military road up the Gardiner River Canon, 
through the Golden Gate and Kingman's Pass, and by the beautiful Falls of the 
West Gardiner, our typical tourist, comfortably seated in a canvas-covered car- 
riage, with an experienced driver, thoroughly familiar with the various points 
of interest that follow each other with such marvelous rapidity, soon reaches a 
lofty plateau, which commands some exceedingly beautiful mountain scenery, 
including Electric Peak, Cinnabar Mountain and Bunsen's Peak to the north, 




WINTER SCENES IN THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 



WONDERLAND. 29 

and three lofty peaks, all upward of 10,000 feet high, to the west. This is 
presently followed by the famous Obsidian Cliffs, a mountain of volcanic glass. 
This remarkable formation — entirely new to nineteen out of every twenty visit- 
ors — bears a close resemblance to jet ; although at places it is mottled and 
streaked with red, as well as with various shades of brown and olive green. 
The road over which we travel is, for some distance, nothing less than a glass 
highway, probably the only one in the world. Its construction was accom-' 
plished by building great fires upon the largest detached blocks, which were 
suddenly cooled and, at the same time, shivered into fragments by the dashing 
of cold water upon them. 

The first of the distinctly marked areas in which the geysers are found is the 
Norris Basin. This has the highest elevation, 7,527 feet, and is, doubtless, the 
oldest, of them all. It is very extensive, and among its many objects of interest 
are the Monarch and Hurricane Geysers, the latter, a recent out-burst, being one 
of the most gigantic displays of subterranean energy to be seen in the Park. 

Three miles south of Norris Geyser Basin is Elk Park, a favorite haunt of 
the noble game whose name it bears. Capt. Harris, U. S. A., and Mr. F. [ay 
Haynes, Official Photographer to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, have 
both borne recent testimony to the immense herds of elk that take refuge in the 
Park during the winter. An interesting letter upon the subject, from the pen 
of Capt. Harris, appeared in the A//icricaji Field oi January 8, 1887. 

Continuing his journey, the tourist will come to the Gibbon Paint Pot Basin, 
with Its 500 springs of boiling mud, of every conceivable color and shade of 
color ; and the Gibbon Cafion and Falls, the latter a beautiful cascade, 160 feet 
in height. A few miles more, and he will be looking out upon the wonders of 
the Lower Geyser Basin, known locally by the appropriate name of Firehole. 
This basin covers between thirty and forty square miles, and contains no fewer 
than 693 boiling springs, exclusive of seventeen that are of sufficient impor- 
tance to rank as geysers. From Firehole the tourist is conducted to the Mid- 
way Geyser Basin, or Hell's Half Acre, containing the famous Excelsior Gey- 
ser, the largest in the world. The eruptions of this geyser are very irregular, 
but the roar that proceeds from its crater and the dense volume of steam that 
almost hides it from view, sufficiently attest its terrible power, and abundantly 
justify the name by which it is best known. The terror of this scene is but 
partially redeemed by the immediate proximity of the Grand Prismatic Spring, 
whose margin is adorned with the most wonderful display of brilliant coloring 
of all the 10,000 springs of this extraordinary region ; and it is with a feeling 
of relief that the visitor makes his way over the foot-bridge, re-enters his car- 
riage, and is driven toward the Upper Geyser Basin. 

This contains the largest assemblage of powerful geysers in the world. In 
addition to 414 boiling springs, that elsewhere would be sufficient to constitute 
a wonderland by themselves, there are twenty-six geysers of great magnitude 
and power. Among them are the best known of all the geysers of the Park, — 
those with whose names the world has been made familiar by the pen and brush 



30 WONDERLAND. 

of author and artist. Here are found the Giant and Giantess, the Castle and 
the Grotto, the Beehive, the Splendid and the Grand, all discharging, at vary- 
ing intervals, but with singular constancy, columns of water reaching not 
unfrequently a height of 250 feet. Here, too, is Old Faithful, whose hourly erup- 
tion affords even the most hurried visitor an opportunity of witnessing at least 
one display of its tremendous power. 

After a little time spent in this basin, the visitor is almost certain to con- 
clude that he has at length reached the climax of the wonders of the Park; 
and the present writer has himself found it impossible to persuade tourists with 
whom he has been brought into contact that there still lay before them a scene 
which, though it might not entirely obliterate the impression made upon them 
by the geysers and other extraordinary objects, they would certainly declare to 
be the crowning glory of the Park. 

The reader, who, not having visited the National Park, has yet gazed into 
some of the profound gorges to be found in the great mountain ranges of the 
far West, will read with astonishment, if not wieh incredulity, that the Grand 
Canon of the Yellowstone, though inferior in actual dimensions to the Yosem- 
ite Valley and the Grand Canon of the Colorado, infinitely surpasses them in 
sublimity, being made to stand pre-eminent among the natural wonders of the 
world, by the majesty of its cataract and the gorgeous blazonry of its walls. 

To say that its cataract — no mere silver ribbon of spray, but a fall of great 
volume — is a little more than twice the height of Niagara, would, by means of 
a familiar comparison, enable almost any one to form a not altogether inade- 
quate conception of its grandeur. But for the matchless adornment of its walls, 
we have no available comparison ; naught but itself can be its parallel. One 
recent visitor describes it as being hung with rainbows, like glorious banners. 
Another, borrowing from Mr. Ruskin, likens it to a great cathedral, with painted 
windows, and full of treasures of illuminated manuscript. But, as we take our 
stand on the brink of the Falls, with twelve miles of sculptured rock spread out 
before us, rising from 1,500 to 2,000 feet in height, and all aflame with glowing 
color, we have to acknowledge, with a distinguished writer and a no less cele- 
brated artist, that, neither by the most cunningly wrought fabric of language nor 
the most skillful manipulation of color, is it possible to create in the mind a con- 
ception answering to this sublime reality. For countless ages, frost and snow, 
heat and vapor, lightning and rain, torrent and glacier, have wrought upon that 
mysterious rock, evolving from its iron, its sulphur, its arsenic, its lava and its 
lime, the glorious apparel in which it stands arrayed. And the wondrous fabrica- 
tion is still going on. The bewildered traveler would scarcely be surprised to see 
the gorgeous spectacle fade from his vision like a dream ; but its texture is con- 
tinually being renewed : the giant forces are ever at work ; still do they — 

" Sit at the busy loom of time and ply, 
Weaviug for God the garment thou ecest Him by." 

It is expected that the great Yellowstone Lake will shortly be embraced 
within the Grand Tour. This magnificent sheet of water — at so great an 



WONDERLAND. 31 

elevation that could Mount Washington, the highest peak in the New England 
States, be submerged in it, with its base at the sea-level, its summit would be 
more than a quarter of a mile below the surface — is fully described in the 
Official Guide to the Yelloivstone National Park, published by Riley Brothers, of 
St. Paul, and sold on the trains at 50c paper, and $1.00 cloth. To that work the 
reader is also referred for a description of the trip over Mount Washburn, as 
well as of various points of interest, that cannot even be enumerated in 
these pages. He will also find much interesting and valuable information rela- 
tive to the Park in the Reports of the United States Geological Survey for 187 1, 
1872, 1878 and 1887, The "Geological Sketches " of Dr. Archibald Geikie, F. 
R. S., Director-General of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, like- 
wise contains a chapter devoted to the geology and natural wonders of the 
Park, and, having been reprinted in pamphlet form by J. Fitzgerald, of New 
York, as No. 39 of the Humboldt Library, it is easily procurable, besides having 
the merit of being concise in statement and convenient in size. It must, how- 
ever, be borne in mind that Dr. Geikie's visit to the Park was made before the 
completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad ; and in this connection it may 
also be stated that the approach from the South still involves 100 miles of hard 
staging, besides reversing the order in which the wonders of this incomparable 
region are best seen. 

Although the physical conditions obtaining in the National Park in mid- 
winter are such as to render it exceedingly dangerous, if not absolutely impos- 
sible, for any ordinary traveler to penetrate beyond the Mammoth Hot Springs 
at that season of the year, it will not be out of place to make mention here of 
the extraordinary feat performed in January, 1887, by Mr. F. Jay Haynes, 
already mentioned in these pages as the Ofificial Photographer to the Northern 
Pacific Railroad Company. That gentleman was a member of the Schwatka 
party, whose departure on a snow-shoe expedition through the Park was so 
loudly trumpeted throughout the length and breadth of the land, but whose 
inglorious collapse, the second day out, gained no such general publicity. 
Being familiar with the topography of the country, and having long cherished a 
desire to see its wonders in their winter garb, as well as to have an opportunity 
of reproducing them with that fidelity to nature for which his work is so well 
known, Mr. Haynes determined not to be foiled in his purpose by the inability 
of his leader and the unwillingness of other members of the party to leave the 
Norris Geyser Basin ; and so, accompanied only by two packers, wearing, like 
himself, the eight-feet-long snow-shoes known in Northern Europe as "skier," 
he continued his journey, and made the entire circuit of the Park, and, although 
overtaken on Mount Washburn by a terrific blizzard, and without food, fire or 
shelter for nearly three days, with the temperature 40° below zero, succeeded 
in getting back to civilization without having to sacrifice the wonderfully beau- 
tiful series of views he had secured, illustrative of the remarkable effects 
brought about by that extraordinary conflict of heat and cold which he had had 
the good fortune to witness. 




(32) 



WONDERLAND. 33 

It now only remains to be added that the roads in the Park have been con- 
structed by military engineers, and are kept in excellent condition ; that com- 
fortable hotel accommodations are provided at the principal points of interest ; 
and that the hotel ratc^ and transportation charges are all regulated by the 
Secretary of the Interior. 

It may be well, however, to remind the angler, in conclusion, that this is the 
far-famed region where the juxtaposition of streams of hot and cold water 
enables him to cook his fish as fast as he can catch them, without changing his 
position or removing them from the hook. 

WESTWARD STILL. 

Resuming his westward journey at Livingston, the traveler is soon ascending 
the first of the great mountain barriers that had to be surmounted by the 
engineers of the Northern Pacific Railroad. This is the Belt Range, which is 
crossed twelve miles from Livingston, at the comparatively low elevation of 
5,565 feet. Considerable mountain climbing has been avoided by the construc- 
tion of a tunnel, 3,610 feet in length, from the western portal of which the line 
emerges into a fine rocky canon. Passing the recently abandoned military post 
of Fort Ellis, we come to Bozeman, a beautifully situated and flourishing little 
city, twenty years old. Few cities can boast of more picturesque surroundings 
than this interesting old town, in the rich and fertile Gallatin Valley, there 
being no direction in which the range of vision is not bounded by majestic 
ranges of mountains, seamed with eternal snow. It is no uncommon thing to 
get forty bushels of hard sprmg wheat, sixty bushels of fall wheat, or one 
hundred bushels of oats to the acre in this valley, eleven degrees and more 
west (jf the meridian which was so long supposed to be the western limit of 
cultivable land in the basin of the Mississippi. Barley also is raised here in 
large quantities, and of such superior excellence as to be in great demand for 
malting purposes at Milwaukee and other eastern cities. At the lower end of 
the valley are the promising little settlements of Gallatin and Three Forks, com- 
manding the valleys of the Madison and Jefferson Rivers, the agricultural lands 
of which, now being brought under cultivation, are not inferior to those of the 
longer settled valley of the Gallatin. 

Four miles more, and the tourist comes upon a point of considerable geograph- 
ical interest, the three mountain streams just mentioned pouring their waters into 
a common channel to form the Missouri River. It is through a rocky canon, 
abounding in wild and magnificent scenery and containing many interesting 
geological exposures, that the greatest river of the continent enters upon its long 
course of 4,450 miles. For nearly fifty miles the line follows its various wind- 
ings, until finally the river runs away northward, through that profound chasm 
known as the Grand Canon of the Missouri, or the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. 

Two new branch lines, to leave the main line at the lower end of the 
Gallatin Valley, are projected for the year 1888. One of them, diverging at 



34 WONDERLAND. 

a point 23 miles west of Bozeman, will run to Boulder, a distance of 42 miles, 
where it will connect with a line now in course of construction from that town 
to Butte. This will bring Butte, the greatest mining city on the continent, 
within easy reach of the agricultural district of Bozeman, and 93 miles nearer 
St. Paul, Chicago and other eastern cities than it now is. The other projected 
branch will run from Three Forks southwest to Pony, an important mining dis- 
trict in which a mineral property was recently sold to a syndicate of eastern and 
other capitalists, among whom were no fewer than four United States Senators. 
It is probable that this branch will be extended to Red Bluff and Virginia 
City, and possibly also to the borders of the National Park. 

MORE ABOUT ANGLING. 

We are now in a district whose attractions for the angler are of such 
an order as to call for more than passing notice. In an interesting article, 
extending through several numbers of the American Anglo-, the editor of 
that journal relates his experience in this locality, in the course of which 
he describes the Gallatin as the fish river of his dreams, the grayling, the 
Rocky Mountain trout and the whitefish "veritably swarming in its waters." 
In another place he declares the Gallatin to be "the pearl of the Rocky 
Mountain waters," while another correspondent of the same journal, who states 
that he has fished in twenty different States and Territories, declares that he 
"never saw a place where you could catch half as many as at Three Forks." 
Anglers, by the way, are recommended by local sportsmen to take guns with 
them, geese, ducks and snipe being abundant. Some excellent scores are 
reported from Bozeman, which has a dozen streams, teeming with mountain 
trout and grayling, within as many miles of the city. Among recent reports 
are those of two gentlemen who, in July, 1887, caught, between them, 103 
trout in three hours ; and a party who, in the following month, made a score 
that averaged six trout per hour for each man. Grouse, pheasant and prairie 
chicken are plentiful around Bozeman, and it is also the outfitting point for 
Henry's Lake, a beautiful sheet of water on the summit of the Rocky Mount- 
ains, near the Idaho and Montana boundary. 

Sixty-five miles west of Bozeman is Townsend, the principal shipping and 
distributing point for no inconsiderable portion of one of the best counties in 
Montana. This is Meagher County, named in honor of that brilliant soldier 
of the War of the Rebellion, Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher, who met with 
his death, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, at Fort Benton, in this 
Territory, of which he was at the time— July, 1867— Secretary and acting 
Governor. Townsend has daily communication by coach with White Sulphur 
Springs, a substantially built town lying in a beautiful valley 5,070 feet above 
sea-level, and surrounded by the grandest of Rocky Mountain scenery. This 
town, which is the judicial seat of the county, has excellent accommodations 
for all classes of visitors, including one of the best hotels in the Territory. 



WONDERLAND. 35 

Medicinal properties of wonderful efificacy are claimed for the waters of a 
spring in its vicinity, further information regarding which will be found in the 
Railroad Company's time tables. 

Besides the Missouri River, which, at Townsend, is a beautiful, clear stream, 
there are three creeks, abounding with trout and whitefish, in close proximity 
to that town. In July, 1887, two gentlemen caught 83 fish in one of them in 
two hours ; the following month, two others caught 42 grayling, weighing 39 
pounds, in three hours ; while two others again caught 82, weighing 74 ]5ounds, 
and that as the result of one day's sport. In the same month, a single angler 
caught 1 10 trout and whitefish in three hours, in the Missouri River. Ducks 
and prairie chickens are equally abundant. 

With the exception of Bozeman, of which but little is to be seen from the 
railroad, not a single town, city or settlement of any kind, which the traveler 
has passed since leaving St. Paul or Duluth, from the great city of Minneapolis 
to the smallest prairie settlement, but has had almost its entire growth since the 
advent of the railroad. Now, however, he is approaching a city which was one 
of commanding position and great commercial importance even when hundreds 
of miles of mountain and prairie separated it from the nearest railroad. This 
is Helena, the capital of the Territory, and the 

QUEEN CITY OF THE MOUNTAINS. 

It was on the afternoon of the 15th of July, 1864, that four weary and 
heartsick miners pitched their tents in that desolate-looking gulch where now 
stands this flourishing city. Disappointed at not being able to secure claims in 
the then prosperous camp of Virginia City, and reduced to great extremity, 
they regarded the little gulch on the Prickly Pear as their "last chance." 
Finding gold in paying quantities, they resolved to settle down, and it is said 
that within two years each of them was worth $50,000. In the meantime the 
little camp, in what was thenceforward known as " Last Chance Gulch," had 
attracted miners from all parts of the Rocky Mountains. It is stated in a recent 
official publication of the Territory that the gulch yielded $30,000,000 during 
the first three seasons it was worked ; but these figures so far exceed the popu- 
lar estimate that they are repeated only under reserve. 

For many years this important mining centre was dependent upon the Mis- 
souri River for its commercial intercourse with the world, and was thus in a 
state of well-nigh complete isolation during the greater part of every year. 
Important, however, as the city became, the visitor will not need to be told that 
it is since the opening of the railroad that those substantial-looking business 
blocks and truly magnificent residences, at which he will never cease to wonder 
from his first setting foot in the city until leaving it, have arisen. Helena now 
claims to be the wealthiest city of its size in the United States. Of its four 
National Banks, one alone has the custody of individual deposits exceeding 
$3,000,000. 



3i> WONDERLAND. 

The romance of mining^ is well illustrated by the story of the citizen of 
Helena, who was digging out a cellar to his house, when a passing stranger 
asked permission to remove the pile of earth that was being heaped up in the 
roadway, promising to return with one-half of whatever dust he might obtain by 
the washing to which he proposed to submit it. Permission granted and the 
earth removed, the citizen thought no more of the matter. Great, therefore, 
was his astonishment when, a few days later, the half-forgotten face of the 
stranger appeared at the door, and he was handed, as his share of the yield 
of that unpromising dirt, the equivalent of $650. 

Possibly, however, a story involving only a paltry sum of three figures, may 
not answer to the reader's conception of the romantic. It does not excite his 
imagination. He expects to read of millions. If so, let us turn to the story of 
the miner, who, confident that he was the possessor of a valuable claim, held on 
to it, in spite of the most adverse circumstances, hiring himself out in winter 
that he might have a little money wherewith to work upon his claim in summer, 
until, at last, after eight years of indomitable perseverance and patient toil, he 
was able to sell his property for $2,250,000 ; or that of the weary and penniless 
wanderer, who, having tramped all the way from Nevada, began a toilsome 
search, to be continued through much suffering and privation for several years, 
but destined to be rewarded at last by the discovery of one of the richest veins 
of gold in the Territory, a vein that has yielded, up to the present time, $4,000,- 
000 worth of gold. 

Among facts not more startling than hundreds of others that might be 
quoted, it is related that a four-mule team once hauled from Helena to Fort 
Benton, for transportation down the Missouri River, two and one-half tons of 
gold, valued at $1,500,000 ; that in the early days potatoes were worth fifty 
cents per pound, and flour $1.00, and that oranges were sold at $1.00 each, and 
small pine-apples at $7.00. In those days many individual claims yielded 
$1,000 a day, and the condition of society was very much the same as that 
which existed in California during the corresponding period of its history, and 
was similarly brought to an end, only by the stern measures of the vigilantes. 

The most valuable gold nugget ever found in Montana is said to have been 
worth about $3,200. There is a nugget in the vault of the First National Bank 
at Helena, weighing 47.7 ounces, and valued at $945.80. But the most inter- 
esting sight in the city is, undoubtedly, the process of assaying at the United 
States Assay Office, where may also be seen those marvelously adjusted and 
delicately graduated scales, by which the weight of even an eye-lash can 
be exactly determined. 

There are several interesting excursions that can conveniently be made from 
this city. The first is to the Grand Canon of the Missouri, known as the Gates 
of the Rocky Mountains ; which name was bestowed upon it by Lewis and 
Clark, in 1805. A delightful drive across the prairie, with the main range of 
the Rockies and much other fine scenery in full view, brings the visitor to 
Hilger's Landing, from which point a steamer makes regular trips through the:: 



WONDERLAND. ' 37 

•Grand Canon to Picnic Canon, Willow Creek and Bear Tooth Rapids. The 
cliffs for the most part are vertical, and from 500 to 1,500 feet high, rising from 
the water's edge. Near the lower end of the canon is the sharp peak called by 
the Indians the Bear's Tooth, rising abruptly from the river to a height of 
2,500 feet. The hours of sailing, rates of fare, etc., are usually to be found 
in the advertising columns of the Helena papers. 

Another interesting excursion is that to Marysville, the terminus of a branch 
twenty miles long, known as the Helena and Northern. This line, which 
scales for ten miles a steep mountain side, is a wonderful piece of railroad engi- 
neering, and scarcely less interesting to the traveler than the famous mines to 
which it leads. Of these, the most famous is the Drum Lumon, perhaps the 
greatest silver-gold mine in the world, shipping an average of nearly !iji5o,ooo 
worth of bullion per month, of which fully one-half may be set down as profit. 
Visitors to the New Orleans Expositions of 1884 and 1885 will remember the 
magnificent exhibits from this mine, which included one solid chunk of high- 
grade ore, weighing 1,715 pounds. There are three other valuable mining 
properties near the terminus of this branch, including the Gloster, which, 
crushing about 4,500 tons of gold and silver quartz monthly, has produced 
since 1881 upward of $4,500,000. 

A day may also, with advantage, be devoted to Wickes, to which point a 
branch twenty miles long has been constructed from Prickly Pear Junction, a 
station on the main line, five miles east of Helena. This village in the mount- 
ains is famous for its reduction works, which are among the largest in the country, 
having produced in 1886 156,399 dwts. of gold, 573,237 ounces of silver, and 
8,252,922 pounds of lead, the whole valued at $1,105,190.76. From the old town 
of Jefferson, on the Wickes branch, the line has been extended to Boulder, and 
this extension the year 1888 will probably see continued to Butte, reducing the 
distance between the two principal towns of the Territory twenty-six miles. 

Another branch has recently been completed to Rimini, seventeen miles 
distant. Here is the famous Red Mountain Mine, containing a ten-foot bed of 
high-grade ore, assaying on an average $170 per ton. Among other notable 
mining properties on the eastern slope of the mountains are the Whitelach 
Union, long the most celebrated gold mine in the Territory, and the Lexington, 
which has produced silver ore averaging in assay value from $15,000 to $20,- 
000 per ton. This is by no means a complete list of the great mining proper- 
ties tributary to Helena, and the mention of the foregoing might seem invidious 
were it not stated that they furnish the most accessible data for illustrating, 
with all possible brevity, the importance of individual mining enterprises in 
this great Territory. 

The next stage of the traveler's overland journey lies across the 

MAIN RANGE OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 

An eminent geologist, whose name has already been twice mentioned in 
these pages, and who crossed the Rocky Mountains by the railway that was the 



38 WONDERLAND. 

first to be carried over the continental divide, some years before the completion 
of the Northern Pacific, declares, in his well-known " Geological Sketches," that 
it was with a feeling of disappointment, almost of incredulity, that he looked 
out upon the scene on either side of the railroad track, as the train approached 
the summit of the route. Instead of the peaks and crests he expected to see, 
there was " only a long, smooth, prairie-like slope," which no traveler would ever 
have supposed was the summit of the famous Rocky Mountains, had not the 
railway company, as Dr. Geikie puts it, " with a laudable desire for the diffusion 
of correct geographical knowledge," had a board erected with an inscription 
to that effect. 

Although the Northern Pacific Railroad crosses the main range of the 
mountains at an elevation 2,693 ^^^t lower than that of the line over which 
Dr. Geikie traveled, the traveler by the former is all the while looking out upon 
scenery of that peculiarly rugged character which has earned for the great 
mountain chain of the continent the distinctive name it bears. Foot by foot the 
train climbs the mountain side, overcoming, one after another, the various 
gigantic barriers that seem to forbid its further progress. Under the shadow 
of great rocks, towering above the tall pines at their feet like the ruins of some 
ancient stronghold, along rocky shelves, through deep cuttings, and across 
innumerable ravines, it pursues its tortuous course, doubling upon itself so 
sharply that it might almost be said to be going in two opposite directions at 
the same time. Finally, at an elevation of 5,547 feet, it enters the Mullan Tun- 
nel, 3,850 feet in length, from the western portal of which it emerges on to the 
Pacific Slope. 

Following the valley of the Little Blackfoot, between grassy hills that present 
a singular contrast to the grandeur that distinguishes the eastern approach to 
the mountains, the train presently arrives at Garrison, from which point the 
Northern Pacific Railroad has running powers into the city of Butte, over a joint 
line operated under the name of the Montana Union. 

No traveler should fail to embrace the opportunity for visiting the 

GREATEST MINING CITY ON THE AMERICAN CONTINENT, 

if not indeed in the world, afforded him by the fact of his being at this point 
within a couple of hours' ride of it. The trip need not seriously delay him, 
and the route, lying, as it does, through the beautiful Deer Lodge Valley, with 
the attractive little city of Deer Lodge in the midst of it, the journey would well 
repay him for the time bestowed upon it, even were there no Butte City at the 
end of it. 

It is at the head of this valley, on the western slope of the main range of the 
Rocky Mountains, that Butte pours forth the smoke of its innumerable furnaces ; 
for not only, be it remembered, is its production of silver so great that it has 
come to be known as the "Silver City," but its copper mines are such as to 
give employment to the most extensive smelting works in the United States. 
We have only to go back to the last United States census to find Butte merely 



WONDERLAND. 39 

a promising mining village, with a population of 3,363. To-day, however, it 
claims six times that number, — not, moreover, of ragged adventurers, attracted 
to it by the prospect of getting rich by luck, but of men whose good, hard, 
systematized labor earns them in the aggregate a round half-million dollars per 
month in wages; of wealthy merchants, of substantial tradesmen, and the various 
other classes neeessary to the making up of a typical Western city. 

Hatl it been proved with mathematical certainty that those vast deposits of 
the precious metals which have made Butte what it is could be worked with equal 
facility and equally favorable results for a hundred years to come, this enterpris- 
ing city could scarcely present a more solid and substantial appearance than it 
do^s ; but the foundations on which its prosperity rests are too manifestly endur- 
ing for there to be even so much as an undercurrent of doubt as to its future. 

As the city has long passed the stage at which the visitor might safely be 
left to find out its chief objects of interest for himself, it may be well to inform 
\\\\\\ that it possesses, among other handsome buildings, a $150,000 Court 
House, and the finest Opera House on the Pacific Slope, outside of San Fran- 
cisco. The various costly goods with which its magnificent stores are stocked 
will undoubtedly be a revelation to him, and will show him that nothing is too 
good for the people of this flourishing city. 

The leading silver mines of the district are the Alice, Blue Bird, Lexington, 
IMoulton, Silver Bow and Dexter, which alone employ 285 stamps, and produce 
over 300 tons of ore daily. The magnificent appliances of the Alice mine, 
including the great Cornish pump, that cost $40,000, are the wonder of every 
visitor. The process of reduction, here, as elsewhere, is somewhat complex, 
especially in the case of the baser ores, being in part chemical and in part 
mechanical. It involves the crushing of the ore to powder, under the pressure 
of enormous bars of iron, weighing 900 pounds each, and known as " stamps," 
and its subsequent roasting in large, hollow cylinders, salt being largely 
employed in the former, and quicksilver in the latter, stage of the operation. 
The Alice mine, the main shaft of which is 1,000 feet deep, yields about 100 
tons of ore per day, and its bullion product approaches $100,000 per month. 
The great Lexington property is owned by a French company, which, in iSSr, 
gave $3,000,000 for it to an honored citizen of the Territory, who is said to 
have bought it, some few years before, for one dollar. It has the reputation of 
being one of the richest, most extensive and most complete mines in the entire 
West, and its production has been $1,000,000 per annum for some years past. 
The Blue Bird, Moulton and Silver Bow have 70, 40 and 30 stamps, respect- 
ively. They are magnificent properties, and exceedingly productive. The 
first-named is a comparatively new enter[)rise, and its appliances are of the 
most improved description, while the Moulton has long made the proud boast 
of working its ore to a higher percentage of its value than any other mill 
in the district. 

But it is the copper mines and smelters that represent the largest capital ; 
give employment to the greatest number of men ; have the largest production, 




(40) 



WONDERLAND. 4.1 

both in tonnage and aggregate value ; and, it may be added, make the most 
smoke. At the head of the rich and powerful companies engaged in this indus- 
try, stands the Anaconda, — its mine at Butte, the greatest copi)er property 
in America, its smelting works, at the neighboring town of Anaconda, the largest 
of their kind in the world. Sold, seven years ago, for an amount that would 
not now be more than sufficient to pay its employes a week's wages, its property 
is roughly estimated to be worth $15,000,000. It handles daily 1,500 tons of 
ore, yielding 225 tons of matte, or 150 tons of pure copper. Its entire machin- 
ery run by water-power, it yet requires for its furnaces upward of 200 cords of 
wood per day, and it is known to have once let a contract for 300,000 cords, 
representing upward of $1,000,000. 

Second only to this gigantic concern, is the Parrott Company, with an annual 
output of about 14,000,000 pounds, valued, with its silver contents, at about 
$1,500,000. Mention must also be made of the works of the Montana Copper 
Company, which have a capacity averaging over a million pounds of fine copper 
per month ; Clark's Colusa, which produced last year about $800,000 in copper 
and $950,000 in silver, and is said to have in sight, above the 300-foot level, at 
least 150,000 tons of valuable ore ; and the Colorado, whose gross output in 
1886 was valued at $890,000. 

While there are no mines in Butte that outrank the foregoing in importance, 
some there probably are that might seem to have an equal claim to a place in 
this list. It should therefore be stated that, as in the case of those tributary to 
Helena, the line has been drawn, not arbitrarily, but at those which furnished 
the most accessible statistical and other information likely to be of interest to 
the general reader and the visitor. 

Returning to the main line, and resuming our westward journey, with fine 
mountain scenery, including the snowclad peaks of Mount Powell, on our left, 
we come to Drummond, from which point a branch tine has been constructed 
to the rich mining districts of New Chicago and Phillipsburg. Four miles from 
the latter town is the famous Granite Mountain mine, said to be producing 
more silver per month than any other mine in the world. Its vein of ore is six 
feet wide, and there are places where it assays as high as 2,000 ounces of silver 
to the ton. There are several other valuable mining properties in this locality, 
and it may safely be predicted that Phillipsburg, now rarel}' heard of beyond 
the limits of the Territory, except in mining circles, will become as widely known 
as the most famous mining city on the continent. 

Following the valley of the Hell Gate River, the name assumed by the Deer 
Lodge, after receiving the waters of the Little Blackfoot, we presently enter 
Hell Gate Canon, at first a beautiful valley, from two to three miles in width, 
but narrowing as we go westward, until, from between its stupendous walls, we 
suddenly emerge upon a broad plateau, where stands the city of Missoula. 
Before the advent of the railroad, Missoula was merely an isolated military post. 
Now, however, it is a flourishing little city, and the recent construction of a 
branch line up the Bitter Root Valley (an exceedingly fertile and well-settled 




THOMPSON FALLS AND SCENERY ON CLARK S FORK OF THE COLUMBIA. 
1. Thompson Falls. 2. Deer Park. 3. East Entrance to Horse Plains. 



(4i) 



WONDERLAXD. 43 

region, where fine crops of cereals, fruit and vegetables are raised annually), 
bids fair to invest it with still greater importance. Missoula, though not 
possessing any luxurious hotel accommodations, is a place at which the tourist 
traveling in a leisurely way will do well to make a brief halt, especially if he be 
anything of a sportsman, mountain trout and grayling abounding in the various 
streams of the locality, while ducks and prairie chickens, deer, elk and bear are 
also plentiful. 

It is not too much to say that there are few tracts of country within the 
four corners of the Union less known than the region lying between the 
Northern Pacific Railroad and the international boundary, and bounded east 
and west by the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia River. From the testi- 
mony of those who have explored it, however, it undoubtedly possesses many 
features of extraordinary interest. 

Readily accessible from the railroad is the Flathead Indian Reservation. 
At Arlee station, the tourist is within five miles of the agency, and at Ravalli a 
like distance from St. Ignatius INIission. A full account of the excellent work 
carried on among the Indians by the Jesuit Fathers, together with an exceed- 
ingly interesting description of the Flathead country generally, appeared in 
the Century Magazine for October, 1882. Some very fine scenery, including 
Pumpelly Canon, said to possess many of the striking features of the Yosemite 
Valley, can be embraced within a single day's excursion from the Mission. It 
is doubtful, however, whether of the thousands of tourists who will pass through 
Arlee and Ravalli in the near future, there will be more than a few who will 
turn aside to visit this interesting locality, for the simple reason that the entire 
region through which they are traveling is so full of attractions of world-wide 
fame. Those, therefore, who are disposed to leave the beaten track and 
make an excursion into less traveled districts, will do well to communicate in 
advance, either by letter or telegram, with the Railroad Company's agent, at 
the station nearest to the locality they wish to visit. Five out of every six of 
such visits will probably be from sportsmen, attracted by the fact, now rapidly 
gaining publicity, that this is the finest game country in the United States. 
But of this, more anon. 

The better acquainted the tourist is with other routes to the Pacific Coast, 
the less hesitation will he have in awarding the palm, for beauty and diversity 
of natural scenery, to the Northern Pacific. He is now approaching a long- 
stretch of line where he will look out upon scenery of an entirely different char- 
acter from any that has preceded it. It is in the country of the famous 

LAKE PEND D'OREILLE, 

and Clark's Fork of the Columbia. For 140 miles of its course, in western 
Montana and the Panhandle of Idaho, the line follows the windings of a 
stream that for grand and imposing river scenery is second only to the peerless 
Columbia itself. It is near Arlee that there approaches the railway the first of 
those beautiful streams whose gathered waters subsequently spread themselves 




(,44) 



WONDERLAND. 45> 

out into, perhaps, the most beautiful of all American lakes, before they 
finally sweep northward to join the great Columbia. This stream, the Jocko, 
the line follows to its conHuence with the Flathead, coming out from the great 
Flathead Lake. Their united waters take the name of the Pend d'Oreille, to 
become the Clark's Fork of the Columbia, at the point at which they mingle 
with those of the Missoula. 

One hundred and two miles from Missoula is the town of Thompson Falls, 
with several fine trout streams in its vicinity, and an abundance of large game 
in the surrounding forest. This is the principal diverging point for the Ccxiur 
d'Alene mines. Every reader will remember the excitement that followed the, 
discovery .of this rich district in 18S3, and the distress which accompanied the 
non-realization of the extravagant expectations with which some thousands of 
penniless adventurers had poured into the district. " 111 news travels apace," 
says the old proverb, and it is probably not nearly so well known that, with the 
introduction of hydraulic mining, the district has taken high rank among the 
mineral regions of the Northwest, and has abundantly demonstrated that former 
claims as to the richness and permanency of its mines were well founded. It 
is probable that a line will be built during the summer of 1888 from Thomp- 
son Falls to Murray and Wardner, the two chief towns of the district, thus 
bringing them into more direct communication with the East than they have 

hitherto been. 

Continuing that great northwestward sweep, wh^ch finally brings it withm 
45 miles of the international boundary, the train presently arrives at Heron, an 
important divisional terminus, where there is a change of one hour, from 
Mountain to Pacific time. This littb settlement has long been a favorite 
resort of the angler and sportsman. Mr. W. C. Harris, himself, says of it that 
there is undoubtedly some of the best fishing in the entire West in its vicinity. 
Its streams abound with mountain trout, char, and a fish known locally as the 
grayling, which, however, is not the Montana grayling, but the much-esteemed 
Dolly Varden trout. The last named sometimes reaches ten pounds in weight. 
A fine specimen 27! inches long, caught by Mr. Egbert A. Brown, Divisional 
Teleo-raph Superintendent at Heron, was sent east, in October, 1886, where it 
was examined by Professor Bean, of the Smithsonian Institution, Professor 
Gordon and other authorities, all of whom pronounced it the Dolly \ arden 
Trout {salvelimis malnia). In the correspondence of the American An-lcr of 
recent dates are found scores in this locality that average some 70 fish per day, 
for each man A local correspondent of the same paper gives the following 
comparative record of the success that has attended visits to the various waters 
of the district, each of which represents one day's sport :— in the Jocko River, 
between Ravalli and Jocko, 63 pounds ; in the Bull River, seven miles east of 
Heron, 42 pounds ; in Lightning Creek, 14 miles west of Heron, 29 pounds; 
and in the Spokane River, between Idaho Line and Trent, 73 pounds. 

But while in the economy of nature it is wisely ordained that perhaps not 
more than one man in a hundred should have the tastes of an angler, there are 




(4fl) 



WONniiRLAND. 47 

few who have not a sufficient taste for the beautiful to lool< out of the car win- 
dows with delight upon that infinitely varied and beautiful scenery, through 
which the train passes, both east and west of Heron. For many hours there is a 
continuous unfolding of scenes, in which are combined, with nature's inimitable 
skill and infinite variety, all that is grandest in mountaiii, all that is most grace- 
ful in woodland and stream. Sometimes on a level with the railway, at other 
times far beneath it ; here on the right, there on the left ; now flowing calmly 
along in one unbroken sheet of liquid emerald, in which are reflected with won- 
drous fidelity the stately forms of the g.igantic pines that grow upon its banks 
and the imposing mountains that rise thousands of feet above it, and then tear- 
ing its way tumultuously through a magnificent rocky gorge, whose wild and 
romantic appearance presents one of those startling contrasts to what has pre- 
ceded it which never fail to produce a powerful impression on the beholder — 
such is Clark's Fork of the Columbia, a river whose changeful scenes are always 
among the most delightful reminiscences of a trip over this great scenic line. 
Where, hour after hour, every revolution of the car wheels reveals a new scene 
of beauty or sublimity, it is difficult to single out particular points as worthy of 
special notice, but probably Cabinet Gorge, five miles west of Heron, may be 
regarded as the climax of this long stretch of charming scenery. Here the 
river makes a sudden turn through a romantic rocky channel, with a perpen- 
dicular cliff rising sheer from its right bank to a height of several hundred feet. 
Imposing mountains tower far above, and the entire scene is so replete with 
the elements of the picturesque, and so admirable in its proportions, that it can 
scarcely fail to arrest the attention of even the most preoccupied traveler. 
Seven and one-half miles west of this point, the railroad crosses the river by a 
fine bridge, from which the tourist gets the last of that wonderful series of 
pictures which in a ride as long as from New York to Albany,— but immeasur- 
ably surpassing the Hudson in beauty, — has never for a moment relaxed its spell 
over him. This is his last view of the river, until, after a short interval, it reap- 
pears in the form of the lovely Lake Pend d'Oreille. 

So irregular in shape and deeply indented in outline, that, while it possesses 
a shore line of probably 250 miles, the longest straight line that could be drawn 
upon it would not exceed forty miles in length, this beautiful sheet of water 
may, without exaggeration, be said to challenge comparison with the most 
famous lakes, either in the Old or New World. Its extent is so great that, were 
it surrounded by mountains of no higher elevation than those which overshadow 
not a few eastern lakes standing high in popular estimation, its scenery, if not 
absolutely tame and uninteresting, would fall infinitely short of the beauty and 
grandeur that really distinguish it ; but the magnificent mountains that look 
down upon it rise, range above range, until they reach an elevation of more 
than 10,000 feet. The railroad follows its winding north shore for twenty-five 
miles, and until recently what the traveler could see of its beauty was limited 
to this small section, just about one-tenth, of its devious shore line. The rail- 
road company has, however, recently erected, at an admirably selected point 



48 WONDERLAND. 

that not only commands an extensive panoramic view, but is also an advanta- 
geous one for visiting the chief points of interest, a small hotel, which, operated! 
in connection with the dining-car department, affords the best accommodations 
at reasonable cost. The prospect commanded by this home-like resting place,^ 
known as " Highland House," is a superb one, indeed. In the immediate fore- 
ground the green waters break soothingly upon a pebbly beach, or fall in crested 
waves. Beyond the picturesque islands that lie out a mile or two from shore 
(one of which has a number of Indian graves in an excellent state of preserva- 
tion), the traveler looks southward over the widest part of the lake to where,, 
nineteen miles away, Granite Point rises perpendicularly from the water 724 
feet, with Granite Mountain behind it, towering 5,300 feet above the level of 
the lake, itself surmounted by the snowy peaks of Pack Saddle Mountain, and 
they, in turn, by the great purple range of the Cceur d'Alenes. On the right and 
left recede into distance the deeply indented shores, here clothed with luxuriant 
forests, there bare and precipitous, with mountains of imposing height beyond. 
The lake is said by local anglers to contain Silver and Rainbow trout, gray- 
ling (Dolly Varden trout?) and char. There is an abundance of mountain trout 
in the many small creeks discharging themselves into it. In June, 1887, over 
thirty trout were taken in two hours by a couple of anglers who were entire 
strangers to the stream in which they were fishing. The following month a 
visitor from Minneapolis and one from New York went out together to Trestle 
Creek, within a short distance of the hotel, and caught forty trout, averaging 
one pound each, in the course of the forenoon. In July, a visitor from Man- 
chester, la., who went out with three local sportsmen, returned witlj five pairs- 
of deer horns, in addition to having had " an extra fine time with trout fishing."' 
Reference has already been made to the 

ABUNDANCE OF LARGE GAME 

in the forests lying between this section of the Northern Pacific Railroad and 
the international line. Within a few miles of any of the stations on Lake Pend 
d'Oreille may be fnund mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, caribou and moose,, 
black and cinnamon bear, and mountain sheep. Of winged game, geese, ducks 
and partridge are plentiful, and they may be shot at any season of the year. 
The railroad company has four stations on the north shore of the lake. The 
first is Hope, where is situated the hotel, and that only. The others are Pack 
River, Kootenai and Sand Point, but only at the last named is there anything 
like a settlement. From Kootenai, a wagon road extends northward through 
the famous Kootenai country to Bonner's Ferry, on the Kootenai River, a fine 
but, in places, shallow stream, three or four hundred feet broad. f^rom the 
Ferry, hunting parties can follow the river, either into the mountains or down to 
Kootenai Lake. 

A few miles distant from the foot of Lake Pend d'Oreille, and ea'^ily accessi- 
ble, is a lake of doubtful orthography, but the very opposite of doubtful in its 
claims upon the attention of the angler and sportsman. It bears an Indiaa 



WONDERLAND. 49 

name, which phonetic spelling has rendered in at least three different ways: 
Kaniksu, Kanasku and Kunusku. The district is a famous one for game. 
Beaver and mink skins, to the value of over $2,000, were brought down from it 
to the railroad last fall and spring, while two gentlemen who paid a brief visit 
to the lake in May, 1S87, killed thirteen caribou in one day. In the following 
September it was visited by a large party of gentlemen from New York and 
Brooklyn, whose adventures formed the subject of a long and interesting article, 
entitled " Esoc Quet," in Forest and Stream, of October 20, which sportsmen will 
do well to peruse. Among the game killed by this party were twenty-three 
black-tailed deer, besides white-tailed deer, caribou, hares, beaver, grouse of 
three varieties, and ducks. 

From the lower end of Lake Pend d'Oreille, the Clark's Fork River, which 
forms its outlet, runs away northwestward to meet the Columbia. The railroad, 
which has likewise been running northwestward since le:iving Livingston, now 
takes a southwestward sweep, which carries it, first of all, through a dense 
forest, containing but few settlements, and little that is of special interest, except 
the beautiful Lake Cocolala, a long but narrow sheet of water on the north side 
of the track. The first place of importance is Rathdrum, one of the best points 
on the line both for game and fish, having three lakes — Hayden Lake, Spirit 
Lake and Fish Lake — within ten miles, as well as a dense forest to the east, 
south and northwest. Priest Lake, fifty miles north, was visited during 1887 by 
various eastern and other sportsmen, who," in addition to an abundance of fish, 
were rewarded also with grouse, pheasants, black and white-tailed deer, caribou 
and bear. 

Nine miles west of Rathdrum, the line leaves the Panhandle of Idaho and 
enters Washington Territory, to which that northern projection of the former 
Territory will probably, at no distant day, be annexed. Near this point, the 
forest, which has closely hemmed in the line on both sides, recedes, leaving a 
fine open space. In a half-hearted sort of way, however, it again approaches 
the track, but almost immediately there is spread out before the traveler the 
great Spokane plain. Two miles west of Trent, the Spokane River, the outlet 
of Lake Coeur d'Alene, comes in from the south, and after making a broad 
sweep on the right side of the track once more approaches the railroad, which it 
finally leaves for that sinuous rocky channel which has given to the flourishing 
little city on its banks the well-known name it bears. 

SPOKANE FALLS, 

whatever it may have been in ante-railroad days, has always been a bright and 
promising little city since the great transcontinental highway over which we are 
traveling first reached it. But it has been promising in the magnificence and 
diversity of the capabilities of the country naturally tributary to it, rather than 
in actual enterprise or the evidences of rapid growth, until quite recently, 
when it has received an impetus that has made it the most rapidly growing town 
between Lake Superior and Puget Sound. Travelers by rail, seeing nothing of 



50 WONDERLAND. 

its great falls, and being in entire ignorance of the vast wheat country and the 
seven rich mining districts soon to pour their wealth into its lap, have been wont 
to inquire whether it was supposed that beauty of situation was of itself sufficient 
to make a large and substantial town. Everyone, however, who was acquainted 
with the capabilities of the surrounding country knew that it was only a ques- 
tion of time when Spokane Falls would become a flourishing city, and their 
predictions are being verified even sooner than they expected. 

While it is more particularly with regard to its claims upon the attention of 
the tourist that we have to deal in these pages, its growing importance as a 
commercial and manufacturing centre cannot be altogether overlooked. The 
first may be summed up in a brief reference to its beautiful situation, upon 
a gravel plateau, sloping gently towards the river, overlooked by pine-clad hills 
with lofty mountain ranges in the far distance, and to those great falls where 
the river, divided by basaltic islands into three distinct streams, curving towards 
each other and pouring their floods into a common basin, comes surging and 
foaming to make its final plunge of sixty-five feet into the deep chasm below. 

These falls are undoubtedly the key to that commercial supremacy which 
the city is most assuredly destined to exercise over a wide area of country. 
While the well-known Falls of St. Anthony, at Minneapolis, represent a force of 
135,000 horse power, those of the Spokane represent one of 216,000 horse 
power, utilizable with equal facility at all seasons of the year. 

Two branch lines have already been built from points on the main line 
within a few miles of Spokane Falls, one of them furnishing direct communi- 
cation with the Coeur d'Alene mining district, and the other with the Palouse 
wheat. country. Other branches are in contemplation — one northward to the 
Colville mines, and another westward into the Big Bend country. So rapid 
and of such importance have been the recent developments in the Colville dis- 
trict, as also in the Salmon River and other mining districts still further north, 
that the summer of 1888 will probably witness the construction of at least the 
former of these projected lines. 

The Cosur d'Alene branch, already in operation, leaves the main line at 
Hauser Junction, nineteen miles east of Spokane Falls. Even should the tourist 
take no particular interest in that wonderful development of mineral wealth 
which is taking place in the Coeur d'Alene region, he will still do well to take a 
short trip into the district, if only for the sake of the beautiful scenery it affords, 
and the delightful sail on Lake Coeur d'Alene which the excursion includes. 
The Coeur d'Alene branch passes Fort Sherman, long known as Fort Coeur 
d'Alene, and recently re-named in honor of Gen. W. T. Sherman, who first 
selected its site. Its terminus is Coeur d'Alene City, situated at the outlet of a 
lake that even rivals in the beauty of its waters and the grandeur of its mount- 
ain scenery the more accessible Pend D'Oreille, while its conveniences for 
boating and fishing are equally good. A well-appointed steamer makes round 
trips daily, except Sunday, during the season, between Coeur d'Alene City and 
Mission, where the Jesuit Fathers began, many years ago, an excellent work 



WONDERLAND. 51 

among the Indians of the district, which they have continued with marked suc- 
cess down to the present time. From Mission, the narrow-gauge railway of the 
Cu^ur d'Alene Railway and Navigation Company will convey the tourist to 
Wardner, one of the most important centres of the mining district, and destined, 
as already stated, to have a branch connecting it with the Northern Pacific 
Railroad at Thompson Falls, in the near future. This trip is in every way 
a delightful one, and unless the tourist is absolutely satiated with lake ami 
mountain scenery, he should on no account fail to make it a part of his 
programme. 

Equally worthy of the observant traveler's attention is the Palouse wheat 
country. The branch that connects Spokane Falls v/ith this famous region 
leaves the main line at Marshall Junction, and runs almost directly southward. 

The capabilities of this section of the Territory for the annual production 
of a prodigious crop of wheat at a cost undreamt of even in Dakota, save on 
one or tw^o isolated farms (and there, only under exceptionally favorable con- 
ditions), recently led the accomplished and practical correspondent of an iii- 
fluential New York journal, who had been taking an exceedingly pessimistic 
view of the future of wheat-growing in the West, to declare, in an outburst of 
enthusiasm, that this Palouse country is destined to do nothing less than 
entirely destroy wheat-growing in India, by virtue of its immense crops, its 
favorable seasons, its economy of production and its proximity to the sea- 
board. Certainly it is a wonderful region. What thirty bushels to the acre 
are to the Dakota farmer, a crop of fifty bushels is to the farmer in the Palouse 
country. 

The climate of eastern Washington, to which alone this remarkable state of 
things is due, differs entirely from that of the western half of the Territory, from 
which it is divided by the Cascade Range of mountains. Indeed no greater mis- 
take could be made than to suppose that the more or less humid climate of the 
coast is characteristic of the Territory as a whole. On the contrary, the eastern 
half is remarkably dry, and that, too, without those extremes of temperature 
which usually accompany a dry climate. The climate of the Palouse country, 
as of other sections adjacent to Spokane Falls, has even a less rainfall than 
the Mississippi Valley, while snow rarely lies more than a few days at a time. 
Mild, sunn}' weather usually prevails until the middle of December, and the 
brief spells of cold that may visit it during the following few weeks are invari- 
ably cut short by the Kuro-siwo, or Japan current, popularly known as the 
Chincok wind, which, striking the coasts of British Columbia and Washington 
Territory, sends a warm wave over the entire northwestern country, extending 
even to the valleys of Montana, where it has been known to raise the temperature 
ninety degrees in a few hours. In this connection it may be added that the 
sloppy, dismal weather which throughout so large a part of the United States 
accompanies the dreary months of winter, is here almost unknown, nor do 
the storms which actually visit the country at all approach in severity those 
experienced elsewhere. 




(52) 



wo NDER LAND. 53 

As is the case in northern Dakota and Montana, the nutritious native 
-grasses are converted into hay as they stand, thus affording winter nourishment 
for the domestic flocks and herds of to-day, just as they did for the buffalo in 
days gone by. It may be well to add, in view of the foregoing statement 
relative to the dryness of the climate, that if any reader should suppose that 
irrigation is necessary, he will be utterly mistaken. Where the cereal crops and 
the vegetables that grow in such profusion derive the moisture necessary to 
their maturity is a mystery, but the crops never fail, and it must not be for- 
gotten that, new as is the country in the main, there are portions of it, here and 
there, where farming operations have been carried on for many years, and the 
capabilities of the soil thoroughly tested. Not to make this agricultural digres- 
sion too long for the general reader, ic may be added in conclusion that from one 
point alone — Oakesdale, on the Spokane and Palouse branch, there were shipped 
last season 6,000 pounds of fruit, including peaches, plums, cherries and apples, 
and 97,000 pounds of wool, besides a large quantity of wheat; and that the en- 
tire region, which contains about 5,000,000 acres of agricultural land, is capable 
of producing 200,000,000 bushels of wheat annually, at a cost but slightly ex- 
ceeding ten cents per bushel, besides enormous quantities of fruit and wool, 
thus keeping the wharves of Tacoma busy with a foreign commerce greater 
even than that of San Francisco. 

The country westward from Spokane Falls is of no special interest until 
Cheney is reached, an important wheat-shipping point in the midst of a rich 
farming country, very little of which, however, is seen from the car windows. 
Eight miles distant is a large sheet of water known as Medical Lake, from the 
remedial properties of its waters. 

Thirty-one miles west of Cheney, the train runs into Sprague, the judicial 
seat of its county, the headquarters for a division of the railroad, and the ship- 
ping and distributing point for a rich section of country, which, though unseen 
by the traveler, is at no great distance from the railroad. 

Sixty-nine miles westward from Sprague is Palouse Junction, from which 
point also a line has been built into the Palouse wheat country. Thirty-five 
miles more and we arrive at Pasco Junction, the eastern terminus of the Cascade 
division of the railroad, and the point at which passengers for Portland have to 
elect whether they will continue their journey via Wallula Junction and the 
Columbia River line or by way of Tacoma. 

The Cascade division, 260 miles in length, presents the same remarkable 
diversity of physical conditions and natural scenery that characterizes the 
country traversed by the Northern Pacific Railroad as a whole. For 150 miles, 
as we journey northwestward, it consists mainly of a far-extending plain, covered 
with sage brush and bunch grass, and of fertile and beautiful valleys. We then 
enter a great forest belt, some seventy-five miles in breadth, which affords us an 
opportunity to see something of the wealth of the Territory in merchantable 
timber. It is here that we cross the Cascade range, indeed the largest timber 
is on the west slope of the mountains, magnificent forest trees growing almost 




COUGAR MOUNTAIN. GREEN RIVER, W. T. 



(54> 



WOA'DERLAND. 55 

down to the water's edge. The remahider of the Hne lies in a narrow valley, 
from whose rich, warm soil are raised those immense crops of hops which are 
the astonishment of the hop-grower all over the world. 

Leaving Pasco Junction, the line runs down to the Columbia River, across 
which it is carried by a substantial bridge. The first important town we reach 
is Yakima, situated in a fertile valley of the Yakima River. Not only has this 
long been a favorite district with stockmen, but its rich soil produces sorghum 
(yielding about 300 gallons of syrup to the acre), sweet potatoes, tobacco, tgg 
plant, melons, wheat of a superior quality, garden vegetables and fruits of all 
descriptions. After leaving Yakima, the line follows for many miles the 
tortuous course of the Yakima River, through a winding cafion abounding in 
beautiful scenery. This brings it to the valley of the Kittitas, a well-settled 
region, some 400 square miles in extent. The most important town here is 
Ellensburgh, the railroad headquarters for the division. This flourishing town 
has a good water-power, which has been taken advantage of in the erection of 
both flouring mills and saw mills. Not only has it tributary to it an extensive 
area of good agricultural land, but gold, silver, copper and bituminous coal are 
all found in its vicinity. Gold to the value of $150,000 has already been shipped, 
anil the other mineral deposits are equally promising. 

Twenty-four miles beyond Ellensburgh, the train stops at Clealum Junction, 
from which point a branch extends to Roslyn, where there is a deposit of true 
bituminous coal, 35,000 acres in extent. Twenty-five thousand tons per month 
are already being mined, and this shipment will doubtless be largely increased, 
for the possibilities of production are almost unlimited, one vein alone being 
estimated to contain 300,000,000 tons. Anoiher half-hour and we reach Easton, 
where the line, which has been gently rising since leaving Yakima, is confronted 
by a mountain grade of 116 feet to the mile, the same as that by which the Belt 
Range and the Main Range of the Rocky Mountains are crossed ni Montana. 
It is the maximum permanent grade permitted the railroad by its charter, though 
much lighter than many now in operation in the Rocky Mountains. If this 
limitation involves a somewhat larger outlay in the original construction of the 
line than would otherwise be necessary, the company will doubtless be more 
than repaid by the greater facility and economy with which it can haul freight 
over its various mountain barriers. With the ascent of this steeper grade, the 
pathway cut for the railroad through the forest, extending for many miles 
in a perectly straight line and forming an avenue of singular beauty and 
stateliness, is exchanged for comprehensive and imposing mountain views, 
which become more and more extensive with the approach of the train to the 
eastern portal of the Stampede tunnel, whence the mountains are seen uprearing 
themselves grandly against the sky, and forming a striking contrast to the great 
valley that lies beneath, clothed with one handsome garment of foliage. 

The tunnel through which the train passes from the east to the west slope 
is 9,850 feet in length, and is, with the exception of the Hoosac Tunnel in 
Massachusetts, the longest in America. During its construction, trains crossed 




(5«S) 



IVONDERLAND. 57 

the mountains by a switch-back line, which was without exception the most 
marvelous piece of railroad engineering in the country. With such wonderful 
skill has the line been carried over heights absolutely insurmountable, except 
by the switch-back system, and of such indescribable magnificence are the 
views from the summit, that it is to be hoped that summer tourist travel, at least, 
will continue to be carried over the summit of the pass, rather than through 
the more direct tunnel. Emerging from the west portal, the traveler will get 
his first view of Tacoma, the Sovereign Mountain. With the possible excep- 
tion of Mount St. Elias, this magnificent peak has no rival on the entire 
American Continent. Towering to a height of 14,444 feet and 100 miles in 
circumference, it is not, like the well-known peaks of the Rocky Mountain 
Range, merely a pinnacle rising a few hundred feet above the continuous range of 
which it forms a part, and to be surveyed by the traveler only from an elevation 
that practically diminishes its height by two-fifths. On the contrary, it rises to 
its perpendicular height of nearly three miles, from the very shores of the Pacific 
Ocean, while it has the further advantage of not being merely seamed or flecked 
with snow, but robed in unbroken, dazzling whiteness all the year round. 

Descending the west slope by the gorges of Camp and Sunday Creeks, the 
train soon reaches the narrow valley of Green River, which it follows for 
many miles, crossing and recrossing the river no fewer than ten times. The 
charming scenery of this romantic defile presents a delightful contrast to the 
imposing mountain views the traveler has so recently gazed upon. The 
Green River, moreover, is a famous trout stream. Mr. F. A. Carle, writing in 
the St. Paul Pioneer Press, declares it to be the prettiest trout stream in 
America, and goes on to tell, with the enthusiasm of the ardent rodster that he 
i.s, how his palm tingled for the pressure of the butt and his ear pricked itself 
for the rattle of the reel, at the first glimpse of its clear pools and dancing 
ripples. Certainly, if there is a river in the world that would tempt us all to be- 
come anglers, this is the one, for it needs no practised eye to see, even from the 
windows of the flying train, that the clear and quiet pools that alternate with its 
rapids and cascades, are fairly aUve with fish. Beautifully situated in this 
valley is the sanitarium of Hot Springs, which will doubtless become a popular 
resort with the contemplated increase of its accommodations for visitors. It 
may be added in this connection that the attractions of the district for the 
sportsman include grouse, pheasant, mountain goat and bear. 

Presenting a striking contrast to the emerald-hued stream whose windings 
the train follows for so great a distance, is the White River, over whose milky, 
glacier-fed waters the line is carried twenty miles west of Eagle Gorge, and five 
miles east of South Prairie, a little town which, in addition to having important 
coalmines oi its own, is the junction for a branch extending to Wilkeson and 
Carbonado, both of which are important coal mining centres, the latter shipping 
some 700 tons per day. 

It is through the valley of the Puyallup River, the outflow of the great Puy- 
allup Glacier, that the line now runs. This is the hop district, to which refer- 







(58) 



WONDERLAND. 59 

ence has already been made. Not only does its soil, washed down from the 
great volcanic formation ot MouiU Tacoma, yield, year after year, phenomenally 
large crops of hops, but its product is of greater strength, is freer from disease, 
is cleaner, and of more uniform color than that of any other part of the country! 
The hop pickmg is done almost entirely by Indians, who, to the number of 
4,000, come annually during the season from points as far distant as British 
Columbia. A recent governor of the Territory states in a report to the Secre- 
tary of the Interior that they excel the whites in their ability for picking. They 
come up the river in their canoes towards the end of August, and their arrival 
and departure are events of no little interest to the tourist who happens to be 
visiting the district at the time. 

A rapid run through the Puyallup Indian Reservation, and there rises before 
us the coming great seaport of 

TACOMA, 

looking down from the series of terraces on which it is built, upon Commence- 
ment Bay. Tacoma possesses many features that are interesting to the tourist. 
First, we have its geographical position at the head of that remarkable body 
of water, Puget Sound— a deep inland sea, extending nearly 200 miles from the 
ocean, covering an area of 2,000 square miles, and with shores so remarkably 
bold, that at almost any point in its 1,600 miles of shore line a ship's side 
would touch the shore before her keel would touch the bottom. 'J'his is not 
the place to dwell at any length upon the commercial advantages enjoyed by the 
city, but the excellence of its harbor, and its proximity to great forests and a 
highly productive wheat region, can not be allowed altogether to escape notice. 
One of the greatest wonders in the whole place is, as has oftentimes been 
remarked, its great hotel, the Tacoma, one of the most beautifully situated, 
admirably designed, and altogether home-like hotels in the country. 

Having established his headquarters here, the tourist can stroll on to the 
eastern piazza and look out upon the incomparable scene that will there greet 
him ; mountains, woodland and sea — the matchless Tacoma rising above all. its 
dazzling robe of snow catching perchance a ruddy glow from the setting sun. 
Sauntering forth into the city, he will see its substantial brick business blocks 
and other evidences of commercial importance, and continuing his walk to the 
Episcopal Seminary, founded by Mr. C. B. Wright, of Philadelphia, in memory 
of a deceased daughter, he may look northwestward to the Olympic Mountains, 
whose highest summit. Mount Olympus, stands out clearly against the sky— 70 
miles away. Continuing his ramble, tliough with that in prospect, he would 
have done well first of all to have engaged a carriage, he may proceed to the 
original town of Tacoma, now known as Old Tacoma or Old Town. Here he 
will find a gigantic saw mill, with enormous engines of 1,400 horse power, 
deriving their motive power entirely from the consumption of sawdust produced 
in the manufacturing of the lumber. He will see a line fleet of merchantmen 
waiting to convey the product of this mill to all parts of the world. In the 



•60 WONDERLAND. 

village itself he will see a little church with the oldest tower in America, the 
fact being that the edifice has been built with one of its corners adjoining the 
trunk of a standing fir tree, sawed off about 60 feet above the ground. 

Returning to the city, the visitor may next direct his steps to the main 
wharf, where the coast and ocean steamships visiting the port embark and 
disembark their passengers, and where tea ships from China may occasionally 
be seen unloading their valuable cargoes. Close at hand are the coal docks, 
from which an average of nearly 1,000 tons of coal is shipped daily to San 
Francisco and other points on the coast. A delightful afternoon's drive will 
take him to Puyallup, affording him a more leisurely view of the Indian Reser- 
vation and the hop fields than he obtained from the windows of the passing 
train. A still more enjoyable carriage excursion is to Steilacoom, 18 miles 
distant, in the vicinity of which was situated the now abandoned military post 
of Fort Steilacoom. 

But what of the climate ? queries the reader. Is it such as to invite anything 
more than a brief visit to this evidently interesting locality ? In answer to this 
question, it is scarcely too much to say that nowhere in the United States is 
there to be found a more delightful summer climate than that of the Puget 
Sound country; while in winter, though there is certainly a considerable rain- 
fall, there is no severe cold, and the English traveler who should find himself in 
Tacoma between November and March, would be reminded by the climate of 
that season of that of the most favored section of his own sea-girt home. It is 
almo.st the only section of the United States, north, south, east or west, that is 
entirely exempt from spells of intense heat during the dog days; but on July 5^ 
1887, when a veritable simoom swept across the entire country — when the 
temperature at New York rose to 99°, at St. Louis to 102°, and even at 
Chicago, with its boasted cool summer temperature, to 96'', 77° was the 
maximum at Tacoma. Nor is this comparison an exceptional or otherwise 
unfair one, for the maximum summer temperature at Tacoma in 1884 was only 
86°, in 1885 85°, in 1886 84°, and in 1887 86°. 

Visitors to Tacoma who, when in Colorado, have accompUshed the wonder- 
ful feat of ascending Pike's Peak on horseback, sometimes cast wistful glances 
in the direction of that great Colossus whose white dome stands out so grandly 
against the clear blue sky, and think what a magnificent prospect its summit 
must command. They wonder, too, if it is possible to make the ascent, and 
whether they can get up and down in a day, as they did with their sisters, their 
cousins and their aunts in the case of some other scarcely less lofty peak. Yes, 
dear reader, the summit is not absolutely inaccessible, although, if you succeed 
in reaching it, you will have the honor of being one of not more than half a 
dozen persons, who have ever scaled its well-guarded heights. You may, how- 
ever, if you can afford to devote a week's time to the trip and a fifty-dollar bill, 
reach a point at which, 11,000 feet above the tide waters that lie so near, you 
can survey its virgin snow fields and the great glaciers that lie embedded in its 
mighty bosom; can look northward over the Sound and the country bordering 



WONDERLAND. 61 

upon it, spread out like a map before you, to where the great sugar-loaf of 
Mount Baker pierces the sky at a distance of 125 miles as the crow flies, and 
sharp and clear as though it were but half the distance — all this, and more, you 
can accomplish, without risk to life or limb, and with no sacrifice of personal 
comfort that is not immeasurably outweighed by the enjoyment you will derive 
from the trip. Nor have you the trouble of making the very elaborate prepa- 
rations necessary to such a trip. Mr. W. D. Tyler, the manager of the Hotel 
Tacoma, will do all this for you on short notice, providinghorses, camping out-fits, 
experienced guides and all other necessaries. Among those who have already 
visited the mountain and its great glaciers, is Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, 
who declared, on his return, that the finest peaks he saw during a long tour 
through the Alps, fell far short of what he had seen on Mount Tacoma. 

Before embarking on the now popular trip to Alaska, for which Tacoma 
is the starting point, our typical traveler would doubtless like to visit the city 
of Portland, and see something of the glories of the Columbia River. The 
Northern Pacific Railroad has its own line extending southward to that city. It 
lies to some extent through a belt of forest, but it also intersects a fine agricult- 
ural country in which several prosperous little towns are growing up. On 
arrival at Kalama on the north bank of the Columbia, the train is carried across 
the river by one of the finest transfer boats in the world, built expressly for the 
Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and constructed to carry thirty cars at one 
time. From Hunter's Point on the opposite bank, the train soon reaches 

PORTLAND. 

Its phenomenal growth, its commanding position on one of the great water- 
ways of the continent, its wealth, commerce and enterprise, render this city one 
of the most attractive on the American Continent. Contenting ourselves with 
touching upon its commercial importance, only so far as it is of interest to the 
ordinary tourist, it may be said, that, although 100 miles from the coast, Port- 
land, like London, Rotterdam and Antwerp, is virtually a seaport, and that load- 
ing at its wharves or riding at anchor on the bright bosom of the river, may be 
seen, not only river craft of all sorts and sizes, but ocean-going vessels of 3,000 
tons. Its chief exports are wheat (for which alone a fleet of over 100 first-class 
merchantmen visit the port annually), wool, hides, hops and potatoes, to an ag- 
gregate value, for the year 1886-87, of $15, 703. 995- The actual capital em- 
ployed in banking and jobbing is estimated in a recent official publication of 
the State of Oregon at $75,000,000, and when the visitor drives past the hand- 
some business blocks that line its principal streets and the beautiful residences 
of its merchant princes, upward of twenty of whom are said to be millionaires, 
he will not for a moment doubt that Portland is a city not only of commercial 
importance, but also of wealth and refinement. 

Its picturesque surroundings render Portland an exceedingly desirable place 
of residence. From the summit of Robinson's Hill, a view which it is no extrava- 
gance to pronounce one of the finest in the world is to be obtained. At our 




(62J 



WONDERLAND. 63 

feet lies the city, nestJed in rich foliage. Stretching- away for many miles from 
where their waters unite in one common flood may be seen the Columbia and 
Willamette Rivers. But above all, bounded only by the limits of the horizon, 
is the great Cascade range, with all its glittering peaks. On the extreme right, 
78 miles distant, as the crow flies, is seen the snowy crown of Mount Jefferson. 
Across the river, 51 miles distant, rises the shai)ely Mount Mood, one of the 
most beautiful mountains on the coast, and the pride and glory of Oregon. 
To the northeast stand out the crests of Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens, 
and in the same direction, 105 miles away, maybe descried the great Tacoma, 
the monarch of the range. All these five peaks are radiant with eternal snow, 
and it may well be imagined that the uplifting of their giant forms against the 
clear blue sky is grand in the extreme. 

At Portland the tourist travel from the East meets that from San Fran- 
cisco, the latter, however, usually including a large eastern element that 
has reached the Pacific coast by one of the southern routes. Tourists coming 
northward from San Francisco have the choice of two routes and two modes of 
travel. They may either take one of the fine steamers of the Oregon Railway 
and Navigation Company, sailing every fourth day and performing the voyage 
in from sixty to seventy-two hours; or they may travel overland by the Shasta 
route — a line that traverses some of the most fertile plains and beautiful valleys 
of this rich State, besides passing within a short distance of Mount Shasta. 
Through trains run over this line from San Francisco (Oakland) to Portland. 
The route lies through Sacramento, the well-known capital of California; Red- 
ding, at the head of the Sacramento Valley; Sisson, where the traveler has a 
grand, full-face view of Mount Shasta; Edgewood, where the same great mount- 
ain is seen in profile; over the Siskiyou Mountains to Ashland; through the 
beautiful and highly productive Rogue River Valley; through the Valley of the 
Umpqua and that of the romantic Azalea River, known locally by the utterly 
unromantic name of Cow Creek; tlirough Eugene City, charmingly situated and 
finely laid out, and the seat of the State University; through Salem, the State 
capital, beautifully situated on the sloping banks of the river; down the Willa- 
mette Valley, fine views of the Cascade Range being obtained on the right; 
through Oregon City, near the beautiful Falls of the Willamette, which repre- 
sent a force of over a million horse power, and so on to Portland. 

There are two delightful river excursions that should be made by every 
visitor to Portland. One is up the 

COLUMBIA RIVER 

to The Dalles, and the other down to Astoria. Neither of these trips need 
occupy more than a single day during the tourist season, although longer time 
may with advantage be devoted to them. The hours of sailing and other par- 
ticulars being advertised from day to day in the Portland papers, all that is 
necessary in these pages is to set forth the principal scenic attractions of the 
two excursions and the points that are otherwise of interest. The trip to The 



64 WONDERLAND. 

Dalles, to begin with, embraces the most magnificent scenery on the entire river. 
As the reader need scarcely be reminded, Portland is not on the Columbia 
River, but on its great affluent, the Willamette. It is situated twelve miles above 
the confluence of the two rivers, and there is consequently a short stretch that 
is common to both excursions. 

The first point at which the steamer touches after entering the Columbia and 
turning eastward, is Vancouver, on the north bank, a pleasant little town occupy- 
ing an exceptionally fine situation, and surrounded by handsome groves of 
trees. Fort Vancouver is an important military post, being the headquarters of 
the Department of the Columbia. For some miles above this point the tourist 
will have the queenly Mount Hood in full view. Travelers who have seen only 
the serrated peaks of a continuous range rising at the most 9,000 feet above the 
point of observation, cannot possibly have any idea of the magnificent appear- 
ance presented by the great volcanic cones of the Cascade Range, rising, some 
of them, with wondrous grace of outline and symmetry of form, to upwards of 
14,000 feet above the ordinary point of observation. Mount Hood is, by general 
consent, the most beautiful of them all, and the matchless grace with which she 
wears her glittering crown renders her a fit consort for the kingly Tacoma. 

Another hour's sail brings the steamer to the village of Washougal, prettily 
situated on the right bank of the river, with pleasant pastures on either side, 
and a forest of spruce in the rear, backed by a lofty hill. Six miles further, and 
we reach the gateway through which the river emerges from the channel — so 
long, and yet so profound, — that it has worn for itself, in countless ages, through 
the great Cascade Range. This is the beginning of the scenery that has given 
the Columbia River its great and far-extending reputation. Passing Table 
Rock on his right (the left bank of the river) and Rooster Rock, a peninsula 
which attains its greatest height at its extreme point, in the shape of an 
immense column rising vertically to a height of several hundred feet, the 
tourist's now thoroughly aroused interest is almost immediately afterward 
attracted by one of the most admirable pieces of scenery on the river. This is 
Cape Horn, an immense rocky promontory on the opposite bank, which has 
withstood the action of the river when more yielding materials have been swept 
before it. It is, however, but one of many bold and more or less sharp pro- 
jections that stand out from the great rounded masses of ihose overshadowing 
mountains whose varied forms astonish and delight the tourist as the steamer 
continues its course. 

At Warrendale, on the left bank of the river, is a large salmon cannery. 
Here the mountains are grouped with magnificent effect, their precipitous and, 
in places, perpendicular sides, relieved by the sombre foliage of giant firs. 
Nearly opposite Warrendale is the huge form of Castle Rock, rising in stern and 
imposing isolation at least 1,000 feet above the river. Continuing, we pass a 
large wooded island. The bottom lands on the right bank, which are here very 
extensive, are also beautifully wooded, and some little farming land adds a 
pleasing variety to the scene. In this vicinity there are usually to be seen a. 



WONDERLAND. 65 

number of fish wheels, those novel contrivances by which the fish are literally 
scooped up out of the water in shoals. 

Three miles above Warrendale we come to the Cascades, where the river, 
which has elsewhere the appearance of a placii.! lake, changes to swift rapids and 
a foaming torrent. A narrow gauge railway, six miles long, has here been 
constructed on the right bank of the river, and passengers are quickly trans- 
ferred to another steamer in waiting to receive them. This transfer is still 
known by the old name of a "portage," though it is one that would make the 
early traders open their eyes in astonishment, could they see it. So far from 
involving trouble or inconvenience, the transfer is an exceedingly pleasant 
feature of the trip. For some little distance the train forsakes the river, 
traversing a narrow and sparsely wooded tract of land. When the river once 
more comes in sight, it is about 200 feet beneath us, rushing swiftly along and 
white with foam. Another instant and the Cascades are in view, — the point at 
which the great river tumultuously forces its passage through a rocky and con- 
tracted channel, forming, with the great mountains that rise on either side, a 
scene of savage grandeur, for which no adequate comparison can be found. 

Having re-embarked, the tourist will notice the solid rock cuttings through 
which is carried the line of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company* 
which follows the left bank of the river, and whose construction along the face 
of mountains rising precipitously from the water's edge, was one of no ordinary 
difficulty. Amid ever changing scenery, the steamer keeps on its course. At 
Chenoweth, on the right bank, an object of especial interest is the great flume 
in which logs and manufactured ties are sent down from the top of a neighbor- 
ing mountain, making the descent, a distance of over half a mile, in from 
eighteen to twenty seconds. 

Near the mouth of the Klickitat, the steamer passes through one of several 
sharply cut natural gateways in a rocky barrier that here stretches across the 
river, and in a few minutes more it is alongside the wharf at the good old town 
of The Dalles. As long ago as 1847, this place was an important fur-trading 
centre, and with the gradual development of the country naturally tributary to 
it, more particularly on the south or Oregon side of the river, it has continued 
to grow in importance. Five miles above the city are the great Dalles of the 
Columbia, where the river is literally turned on edge, so narrow and profound 
being the chasm through which it flows that the huge proportions of its 
mighty flood are absolutely inverted. 

The return journey to Portland may be made, either by boat or by any of 
the trains of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The latter route 
not only affords fine views of the scenery on the right bank of the river, but 
also embraces several waterfalls of exceeding beauty that come down from the 
mountains on the left and are not seen to advantage from the river itself. 
Among them is the lovely Oneonta, 600 feet of silvery ribbon floating from a 
dizzy height, situated near the thirty-fourth mile-post eastward from Portland. 
A few minutes more, and the train comes to a stand opposite the still more 




ONEONTA GORGE, COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON. 



(66) 



WONDERLAND. 67 

beautiful Multnomah, which has a descent of no less than 820 feet. At the 
Pillars of Hercules, two gigantic columns of rock, one on either side of the 
track, the railroad leaves the river and runs direct to Portland. 

If the scenery of the Lower Columbia is not so abrupt, stern or impressive 
as that of the middle river, it has many admirable points of interest, and is far 
from being tame or monotonous. To begin with, the river winds considerably, 
for so great a body of water. The picturesque hill sides are covered with heavy 
firs; islands, wooded and exceedingly pretty, occur at intervals, and salmon 
canneries in great numbers lend an additional clement of novelty to the trip. 

Until within the last three years, the canning industry of the Columbia 
River showed a steady nicrease. In 1883, the total pack was no less than 629,- 
400 cases, valued at $3,147,000. Each of the last four seasons, however, has 
shown a marked falling-off from its predecessor, until in 1887 the catch 
amounted to only 356,000 cases, valued at $2,124,000. The entire export since 
the year 1866, exclusive of the salt-pack in barrels and of the large local con- 
sumption, amounts to 371,116,000 pounds, or about 25,000,000 fish. 

Twenty miles or so from its mouth, the river widens out into a broad estuary, 
some seven miles across. Here is Tongue Point, a bold headland projecting 
into the river from the Oregon shore. It is on a beautiful bay, between this 
point and Point Adams, that there stands the city of Astoria, known far beyond 
the limits of its own trade and commerce, important though these are. With 
its early history, including the arrival of John Jacob Astor's trading ship Ton- 
quin., and its subsequent British occupancy, the world has been made familiar 
by Washington Irving's delightful volume " Astoria", and it is, perhaps, suf- 
ficient to say that it is to-day an exceedingly interesting city to visit, not more 
on account of its being the oldest British settlement in the Northwest and the 
central figure in the salmon fishing of the Columbia River than for the novelty 
of its construction, built, as it is, largely on piles, after the manner of Amster- 
dam. Its busy wharves and abundant shipping proclaim it a seaport of con- 
siderable importance, requiring only a railroad or uninterrupted navigation on 
the middle Columbia, to make it a great city. 

Of the ten thousand excursionists said to visit Astoria annually, a large 
majority are on their way to the various attractive summer resorts which have 
sprung up on the sea coast, both on the Washington and Oregon sides. The 
entrance to the river is guarded on the north by Cape Hancock, formerly 
known as Cape Disappointment, a bold headland commanding a magnificent 
view of the ocean, of a long stretch of picturesque shore line and of the 
Columbia River valley. 

Between Ilwaco — a little town in its vicinity, with a long crescent-shaped 
beach of fine white sand sloping to the water and heavily wooded hills in the 
rear — and Astoria, a steamer runs daily, making close connection with those to 
and from Portland. During the summer of 1887, a superbly appointed 
steamer performed a through service between Ilwaco and Portland. The 
best accommodations are obtainable, not in the village itse'f, which is 



68 WONDERLAND. 

really situated on an expansion of the river, just within the two great head- 
lands before mentioned, but at Seaview, on the coast, from which point car- 
riages cross over to Ihvaco to meet the boats. On the Oregon shore, south 
of Cape Adams, are Clatsop Beach, where there are good hotel accommoda- 
tions and excellent hunting and fishing, and a popular resort known as- 
Seaside, possessing a multitude of attractions, including a fine ocean beach 
and a trout creek. If the tourist be unable to make a long stay at any of 
these places, he ought at least to pay them a brief visit, if only to see where 
the great river discharges itself into the ocean, at the rate of one million 
gallons per second. 

Our typical traveler has now practically reached both the northern and 
western limits of United States territory, save that distant province of 

ALASKA, 

which stretches away from a point six hundred miles north of the dividing" 
line between the United States proper and the British possessions to the shores 
of the Polar Sea, and as far west of San Francisco as the coast of Maine lies- 
to the east. 

There is so much of romance associated with the idea of a trip to this 
far and mysterious Northland, so much that appeals to the imagination of 
even the most phlegmatic and sober-minded among us, that could it be brought 
home to the American people, with the force and vividness of some great 
and sudden event in contemporary history, that it is possible to make, comfort- 
ably and inexpensively, within the narrow compass of fourteen days, a voyage 
extending to within a few degrees of the Arctic circle and embracing many of 
the greatest wonders of that land of icebergs and glaciers, not all the ships that 
sail American waters would be adequate for the conveyance of the rush of 
travel that would at once ensue. 

So erroneous, however, are the prevailing ideas with regard to our distant 
possession, and so liable to become the foundations of utterly wrong inferences 
are even those actual facts regarding the country, which have, by slow degrees, 
found entrance into the public mind, that such statements as that a temperature 
of zero is rarely ever known at Sitka, that often an entire winter will pass 
without ice being formed thicker than a knife blade, and that there is not a day 
in the year when vessels may not load and unload in the harbor of the capital 
city, are received with more or less incredulity, and regarded as utterly incon- 
sistent with the fact that perpetual snow is found within three thousand feet of 
the sea-level, and that rivers of ice, i,ooo feet deep, run down to the sea from 
far in the interior of the country. Visions, too, are conjured up of cramped 
and greasy little whale boats, making tedious voyages, at irregular intervals^ 
through rough seas that in so great a distance cannot fail to be tempestuous. 

That large and well-appointed steamships are engaged in a regular service, 
and that the long voyage they make is never productive of more than a transient 
squeamishness, however susceptible be the traveler, are almost incredible pieces 



WONDERLAND. 69 

of news to those who hear them for the first time; and yet, while such erroneous 
notions as have been cited are current, one venturesome traveler after another, 
to the surprise, and not unfrequently against the advice and remonstrance of 
his friends, ventures forth to put the claims and pretensions of the railroad 
and steamship companies to the test, and return to be the hero of the social 
circle in which he moves. But if this is the condition of things to-day, it will 
be but a short time before the Alaska excursion will no longer be the subject of 
these various misconceptions, but will have taken the place to which it is 
■entitled in popular estimation. 

The handful of daring spirits contributed by over thirty States and Terri- 
tories during the season of 1887 aggregated, after all, the respectable total of 
1,500 persons, and these, including, as they did, three United States Senators 
and three members of the House of Representatives, four ex-Governors, and a 
distinguished array of University professors, journalists, and worthy represent- 
atives of the Bench, the Bar, of Science and of Art, will be the most efficient 
agents Alaska could possibly have for proclaiming, far and wide, its incompar- 
able attractions and the facility and comfort with which a visit to it can be 
made. 

Tacoma, as already stated, is the starting point for the Alaska excursion, and it 
is there that our representative company, drawn from every part of the country 
and even from abroad, will gather, in the spacious halls of its great hotel, 
withi-; twenty-four hours of the advertised time of sailing. During the season 
of IC87, that hour was 4.00 A. M., and passengers went aboard the previous 
evening, to look out in the early morning through the windows of their state- 
rooms upon the city of Seattle, beautifully situated on a series of terraces 
rising from the east shore of Elliott Bay. 

Seattle is the oldest American city on the Sound, and has long been a place 
of considerable importance. The enterprise of its people and their unbounded 
faith in its future, even after Tacoma was selected as the western terminus of 
the great transcontinental line over which the traveler has journeyed, need no 
setting-forth in these pages; neither do the great and varied resources of the 
rich country tributary to it, for have they not been advertised through the 
length and breadth of the land ? On the outward voyage, the tourist has to 
•content himself with surveying the city from the deck of the steamer, deferring 
until his return that more careful inspection of which the city and its environs 
are so well worthy. 

A delightful three hours' sail on the broad waters of the Sound, the Medit- 
erranean of the Northwest, with its fir-lined shores, and the glorious, snow- 
crowned peaks of Tacoma and Baker looming up against the sky in regal 
majesty, and the steamer runs alongside the wharf at Port Townsend, the port 
of entry for the Puget Sound district. This town, not inaptly called the Gate 
City of the Sound, possesses an excellent harbor, with both good anchorage and 
adequate shelter. It takes but a short time for compliance with the requirements 
of the Customs as they affect an outward-bound steamer, and off we go 




(70) 



• WONDERLAND. 71 

again, this time right across the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, an outlet to the 
open sea. As the kingly form of Mount Tacoma recedes into the distance, 
that of Mount Baker increases in distinctness, while we have also a fine view of 
the Olympic Mountains on our left, and the lofty ranges of Vancouver Island, 
for whose beautiful capital we are now steering, right before us. 

So exceedingly picturesque and generally attractive is the appearance pre- 
sented by the City of Victoria to an approaching steamer, that it is with no 
little satisfaction that the traveler learns that a stop of several hours will be 
made in its harbor. While there is no lack of American cities that have attained, 
within a period corresponding to that of the growth of Victoria, far greater 
magnitude and commercial importance, the beautiful capital of British Columbia 
IS fashioned after so very different a pattern, and presents, if not to old-world 
eyes, at least to most Americans, so quaint an appearance, with ks ivy-covered 
houses, its admirable roads and its fortifications, that it is har^. to believe that 
it is really the young city it is. It is, however, but little more than forty 
years since the United States ship Vinceuncs^ entering the Sound through the 
Straits of Fuca, found what is now its site a most forbidding picture of sav- 
age life. It was the Caribou mining excitement of 1868, that first brought 
any considerable population — and that a mere transient one — around the post 
established here, a few years before, by the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1870, 
although it had in the meantime been made the capital of the Province, 
Victoria contained but 3,270 inhabitants. Its present population is about 
12,000, and there is probably no more self-contained city of its size in the 
world, for it has its own orchards and pastures, forests and coal fields, while 
Its manufactories are as varied as those of many cities ten times its size. 

It is not, however, with these things that the transient visitor is chiefly 
concerned, nor even with the exceptionally fine climate it enjoys, except in so 
far as the clear skies and balmy air he is almost certain to find there may con- 
tribute to the sum total of his enjoyment. It is rather with its superb situa- 
tion, with the sea on three sides, bordered by picturesque shores and grassy 
hills. These will assuredly delight him, as will also — and possibly still more — 
a drive through its glorious woods, with their lovely undergrowth of almost 
tropical luxuriance, to the neighboring village of Esquimalt, with its fine harbor, 
its immense dry dock, its naval arsenal, and the ships of the British Naval 
Squadron of the Pacific, of which it is the rendezvous. Returning to the city, 
he may stroll into one of its old curiosity shops, filled with a tempting display 
of those various artistic products in which the native races of the northwest 
coast so greatly excel. On his way back to the steamer, he will not fail to ad- 
mire the striking picture presented by the almost land-locked inner harbor, 
with its shipping, its Indian canoes, its narrow rocky entrance, and its white 
lighthouse, standing out against the dark foliage of the adjacent woods; nor 
the glistening peaks of the Olympic Mountains, over in Washington Territory; 
nor yet the trim and tasteful, but unpretentious, government buildings over- 
looking James Bay. 



72 WONDERLAND. 

While, among the thousands of tourists who visit this city annually, there 
may be one or two who will give it a bad name, because they have had to pay 
for some trifling article a few cents more than they had been accustomed to, 
or, rushing into the Post-Office just as the mail was being made up were sur- 
prised to learn that postage stamps were obtainable only at the stationery stores, 
ninety-nine out of every hundred leave this beautiful and interesting little city 
with regret, and carry away with them only the pleasantest recollections of their 
brief visit. 

When the steamer once more gets under way, we feel as though our voya«ge 
had at last begun in good earnest, and maps, guide books and glasses make their 
appearance, in numbers almost sufficient to start a bookseller and optician in 
business. One will have provided himself with "Alaska and its Resources," by 
Mr. W. H. Dall, of the Smithsonian Institution, a work which, although twenty 
years old or nearly, is still the only comprehensive and trustworthy description 
of the Territory, as a whole; another will have the Alaska volume of Mr. H. H. 
Bancroft's "History of the Pacific States"; while a third will produce from his 
baggage Dr. Sheldon Jackson on " Alaska and Missions", an excellent work 
founded on extensive observation during several years' residence, and dealing 
especially with the labors of the various Christian missionaries in this great 
field. Others, desirous of seeing the impression produced upon transient visit- 
ors like themselves, will be conning the pages of Miss Scidmore's " Journeys 
in Alaska" or those of "Our New Alaska," by Mr. Chas. Hallock; while 
probably some English tourist, with the love of mountain climbing and advent- 
ure characteristic of his race, will follow the wanderings of Mr. Whymper or 
Mr. Seton-Karr, in their respective works " Travels in Alaska " and " The 
Shores and Alps of Alaska." 

Before reaching any broad expanse of open water, the steamer passes through 
a picturesque archipelago, which faintly foreshadows in beauty the island- 
studded waters through which will he so large a part of our voyage. A momen- 
tary interest is here excited by our passing on the right the island of San Juan, 
the possession of which, as every reader will remember, was awarded to the 
United States, in 1872, by the Emperor of Germany, then King of Prussia, to 
whom had been referred the interpretation of a treaty of somewhat ambiguous 
phraseology. 

Almost uniformly smooth as is the navigation of the Inland Passage, the 
arrival and departure of the steamer at or from particular points cannot be pre- 
dicted many hours in advance, so much depends upon the state of the tide. 
Even in this high latitude night comes at last, and the first question in the 
morning, from almost every passenger, is Where are we now? If, therefore, 
it were possible to relieve the ship's officers of the endless string of questions 
with which they are plied, as to the whereabouts of the steamer at particular 
times, it would be a grateful task to do so, but all that is practicable is to point 
out the principal landmarks and the chief points of interest, so that these more 
or 'ess troublesome inquiries may be reduced to a minimum. 



WONDERLAND. 73 

For fully a day and a half after leaving Victoria, we have on our left the 
great island of Vancouver, 300 miles in length, and by far the largest island on 
the Pacific Coast. Having passed through the archipelago, to which reference 
has already been made, and which occupies the extreme southern portion of 
the Strait, or Gulf, of Georgia, as it is variously designated, we come to the 
greatest expanse of water to be met with on our entire trip, save those occa- 
sional points where we are able, for a brief period, to look out upon the open 
sea. Before long, however, we have the large island of Taxada on our right. 
This island, which is largely in the hands of speculators, among whom is at 
least one American company, contains an immense deposit of iron ore, rendered 
especially valuable by its exceptionally ;?w percentage of phosphorus. 

Another unbroken expanse of water, and we enter the first of those wonder- 
ful river-like channels through whose picturesque sinuosities three-fourths of 
our voyage will lie. This is Discovery Passage. It lies between the western 
side of Valdes Island and the northeastern shore of Vancouver Island. The 
southern extremity of the former island, known as Cape Mudge, is a peculiar 
headland about 250 feet high, flat and wooded on its summit. As the steamer 
approaches this point, every passenger on deck expects it to continue on its 
course through the broad open waters to the right. Instead of that, however, 
it leaves the headland to the right, and enters the narrow passage, not more 
than a mile in breadth, lying to the west of it. For 23 miles it follows this 
picturesque waterway, overshadowed by noble mountains rising from both 
shores. 

From an expansion of the Passage, caused by an indentation on the Van- 
couver shore, known as Menzies Bay, we pass into the famous Seymour Nar- 
rows, a gorge two miles in length, and less than one-half mile in breadth. 
Through this contracted channel, the tides rush with great velocity, sometimes 
running nine knots an hour. The steamer is usually timed to reach this point 
at low water, but it rarely happens that the waters are not seen in a state of tu- 
mult sufficient to constitute their passage a decidedly interesting feature of the 
voyage. 

At Chatham Point, a low rocky promontory on the Vancouver Island shore, 
we take the more westerly of two apparently practicable channels, and enter 
Johnstone Strait, 55 miles in length. For some distance, this channel is very 
similar to Discovery Passage, though it subsequently broadens out to a width of 
from one and one-half to three miles. The magnificent range that rises from 
the Vancouver Island shore is the Prince of Wales range, the highest point of 
which, Mount Albert Edward, rises 6,968 feet above the waterway that washes 
its base. It is never entirely free from snow, traces of which, indeed, extend 
down the dark sides of the mountain to within 2,000 or 3,000 feet of the sea 
level. A noble snow-covered peak is about this time a prominent object on the 
right, while nearer at hand many beautiful inlets engage the traveler's atten- 
tion. For some miles northward from the entrance to Johnstone Strait, the 
land on the right is Thurlow Island. This is succeeded by Hardwick Island, 



74 WONDERLAND. 

from which it is separated by Chancellor Channel, connecting with the broad 
waterway which seemed to the traveler the more likely course for the steamer 
to take when, a few hours before, she entered the narrow Discovery Passage. 
Another channel intervening, and we have the mainland of British Columbia 
forming the eastern shore of the strait. It is much indented by bays and inlets, 
and many fine lofty peaks tower up beyond it, while on the opposite or 
Vancouver Island shore. Mount Palmerston presents an exceedingly fine appear- 
ance. The islands which have been mentioned are only those larger bodies of 
land separated from the mainland by narrow channels, and for the most part so 
mountainous that they would be mistaken for the mainland in the absence of 
any statement to the contrary. The thousands of islands, from mere rocky 
points, a few square feet in extent, to those larger summits of subnerged 
mountains which may sometime become the sites of delightful summer homes, 
it IS impossible to particularize; and it need only be said that in their multitude 
and variety — each having some beauty peculiar to itself — they form, with the 
bold shores of the strait and the distant snow-covered peaks, a series of pictures 
of which the traveler never wearies and which he can never forget. 

The northern entrance to Johnstone Strait is occupied by a beautiful archi- 
pelago, the two largest islands of which are Hanson Island and Cormorant 
Island. On the latter, between which and Vancouver Island we continue our 
course northwest through Broughton Strait, is Alert Bay, with a large salmon 
cannery, an Indian village and a Mission. The remarkable conical peak long 
visible on Vancouver Island is Mount Holdsworth. 

From Broughton Strait, fifteen miles in length, we suddenly emerge into the 
broad Queen Charlotte Sound, a magnificent expanse of water, twelve to eighteen 
miles from shore to shore. The extensive views here obtained present a striking 
contrast to the scenery of the narrow passage through which for some hours 
the steamer's course has lain. An interesting point on the west shore is Fort 
Rupert, a post of the Hudson's Bay Company, with a large Indian village 
adjoining it. Continuing on its course, within a short distance of the Van- 
couver Island shore, our good ship next enters Goletas Channel, where we have 
Galiano and Hope Islands, together with some hundreds of smaller islands, on 
our right, and picturesque mountains of considerable elevation on both right 
and left. 

We have now to bid farewell to the great Vancouver Island, whose most 
northerly point. Cape Commerell, we leave to the left. Emerging from the 
channel, which affords us, at its western entrance, an exceedingly fine retro- 
spective view in which Mount Lemon is a prominent object, we look westward 
over the broad expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Here, if anywhere on our entire 
voyage, we are sensible, for a short time, of a gentle swell. Those, however, whom 
the mere mention of the open sea would be sufticientto drive to the seclusion of 
their cabins, may take comfort in the assurance that the steamer has scarcely 
begun to yield to its influence when it passes under the lee of the great Cal- 
vert Island, and enters the land-locked channel of Fitzhugh Sound. Here, again, 



WONDERLAND. 7-5 

we have superb scenery on either side, the mountains of Calvert Island cul- 
minating in an exceedingly sharp peak, known as Mount Buxton (3,430 feet), 
the retrospective view of which is very fine. The scenery on the mainland 
and the islands on our right is similar in character. The soundings here 
indicate very deep water, although there is excellent anchorage in many of 
those beautiful bays which are formed by the indented shores. As we approach 
the northern extremity of the Sound, where Burke Canal opens out on the right 
(opposite the great Hunter Island, the most northerly of the three large islands 
which, with a number of smaller ones, form the west shore of the Sound)^ the 
scenery increases in grandeur, the lesser and nearer hills being clothed to 
their summits with coniferous trees, while the more distant ones, overtopping 
them, are covered with snow. Here a surprise awaits the traveler in the sudden 
turning-about of the steamer, whose helm is put hard-a-starboard with the 
result that, instead of continuing its course through the broad and exceed- 
ingly attractive Fisher Channel, it turns sharply to the left, through the nar- 
row Lama Passage, which, midway between its two extremities, itself makes 
a sharp turn northward. 

On the shore of Campbell Island, we pass the trim native village of Bella 
Bella, with its little church. On the opposite shore are a number of graves, 
some of them with totem poles, one of the domestic peculiarities of this region, 
of which more will be said in its proper place. 

The northern entrance to Lama Passage, through which we emerge into the 
broad Seaforth Channel, with its multitude of picturesque islands, is extremely 
narrow, but entirely free from concealed dangers. Just before turning west- 
ward into Seaforth Channel, we have the finest scenery we have so far gazed 
upon, the grouping of the mountains being grand in the extreme. If it be 
afternoon, its exquisite beauty will be greatly enhanced by atmospheric effects 
utterly unlike anything that ninety-nine out of every hundred of our fellow 
passengers have ever before seen. The sunset, too, is almost certain to be of 
such indescribable grandeur that pen and brush will be thrown down by the 
despairing author and artist, who will alike resign themselves to the ravishing 
beauty and splendor of the scene. 

Another turn in our remarkably devious course, and we are steaming north- 
ward through Milbank Sound, through whose broad entrance we look out to 
the open sea. Islands succeed islands, and mountains, mountains; and the 
traveler is almost as much impressed with the mere geographical features of this 
extraordinary region as with the beauty of its scenery. Here we see, for the 
first time, glacier paths on the mountain sides, the lofty pyramidal Stripe 
Mountain, so called from the white streak on its southern flank, being an 
especially prominent object. Leaving Point Jorkins, the southern extremity of 
the great Princess Royal Island, on our left, we continue our course almost 
directly northward through the long and narrow Finlayson Channel, some 24 miles 
long, with an average width of two miles. The bold shores of this fine channel 
are densely wooded to a height of 1,500 feet or more; precipitous peaks, rising 



7(3 WONDERLAND. 

to a height of nearly 3,000 feet, occurring at intervals, with still higher mount- 
ains, whose dark masses are relieved with patches of snow, rising behind them. 
Waterfalls of remarkable height here add a new element of beauty to the incom- 
parable series of pictures revealed to us with the continued progress of the 
steamer. A contraction of the channel known, for twenty miles, by the name 
of Graham Reach, and, for the next ten miles, as Fraser Reach, brings us to 
the north point of Princess Royal Island, where we turn westward through 
McKay Reach into Wright Sound. There is nothing here calling for special 
notice, although it must not be understood that the scenery is, on that account, 
any the less picturesque. It is worth while studying these successive channels 
upon the charts of the United States " Pacific Coast Pilot," so singular is the 
appearance they present. Grenville Channel, which we enter from Wright 
Sound and which lies between Pitt Island and the mainland, is, for fully 50 
miles, as straight as any canal in the world. Its scenery, on both sides, is 
exceptionally line, the mountains grouping themselves with magnificent effect. 
Those near at hand are cloth . with dark foliage, others more remote assume 
a purple hue, while many are seen to be seamed with the paths of glaciers and 
avalanches, the higher peaks being in every case covered with snow. Many 
beautiful islands start up in mid-channel, uniformly covered with a dense 
growth of fir, to the very edge of the water. The channel, too, is, at places, 
exceedingly narrow, and the precipitous mountains which rise from its shores 
attain a height varying from 1,500 to 3,500 feet. From an expansion of this 
channel, we pass through a narrow strait known as Arthur Passage, which has 
Kennedy Island on the right, and the large Porcher Island, with many fine 
mountain peaks, on the left. 

If the frequent recurrence of geographical designations renders this brief 
description of the Alaska trip less interesting to the general reader than it 
otherwise would be, there will be a counterbalancing advantage gained by the 
actual traveler, who will find none of the more entertaining works that have 
been written on the subject of any great use to him as practical guide books. 

Continuing our course, we emerge from the channel last named into the 
great Chatham Sound, a broad expanse of water from whose distant shores rise 
imposing mountains. The eastern shore is here formed by the remarkable 
Chim-sy-an Peninsula, which, though forty miles long and from five to fifteen 
miles in breadth, is connected with the mainland only by a narrow isthmus. 

Continuing our course northward through the broad Chatham Sound, with 
Dundas Island on our left and a range of snowy mountains, presenting a mag- 
nificent appearance, on our right (Mount McNeill, the highest of its peaks, 
rising 4,300 feet above the sea, and having the appearance of being much 
higher by reason of our seeing its entire height from the ocean level), we soon 
cross, in latitude 54° 40', the boundary line between British Columbia and the 
United States Territory of Alaska. Here, we shall do well to acquaint our- 
selves with such facts relative to the extent, physical conditions, ethnological 
features and natural resources of the "district" (to give it the ill-chosen name 



WONDERLAND. 77 

by which it is known to the United States Government) as will, at least, give us 
a comprehensive and, in the main, correct idea of the great territory we are 
about to visit. 

As to its history, little need be said, for its Russian occupation is of no 
practical concern to us, while, on the other hand, every reader will remember 
the circumstances of its transfer to the United States Government in 1868, 
for the sum of $7,200,000. Its e.vtent is probably not nearly so well known, 
or, if the numerals which represent it have been learned by heart, it is 
still doubtful whether they have created in the mind any adequate con- 
ception of the vast extent of the province. Availing ourselves, therefore, of 
the figures and comparisons that we find ready to our hand in the Reports of 
Governor Svvineford and Dr. Sheldon Jackson, we may remark that its extreme 
breadth from north to south is 1,400 miles, or as far as from Mame to Florida, 
and that from its eastern boundary to the western end of the Aleutian Islands 
is 2,200 miles; so that the Governor, sitting m his office at Sitka, is very little 
farther from Eastport, Me., than from the extreme western limit of his own 
jurisdiction, measuring, of course, in a straight line. Its coast line of 18,211 
miles is nearly twice as great as the combmed Atlantic and Pacific coast lines of 
the United States proper, and its most westerly point extends beyond the most 
easterly point of Asia a distance of nearly 1,000 miles. In actual extent it is 
as large as all the New England and Middle States, together with Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee combined, or as all 
that portion of the United States lying east of the Mississippi River and north 
of Georgia and the Carolinas. A country so vast as this must be a poor one 
indeed, if the paltry $7,200,000 paid for it does not turn out to bear little more 
than the same proportion to its value that was borne by the pepper-corn 
rent in so many old English legal conveyances to the valuable estates for 
whose holding it was the nominal annual consideration. 

With regard to its physical conditions, it is sufficient for our present pur- 
pose to say that a large part of it is still passing through the glacial period; 
that it contains in Mount St. Eliasthe highest mountain on the North American 
Continent, and in Mount Cook, Mount Crillon and Mount Fairweather peaks 
exceeded in height only by Mount Popocatapetl and Mount Orizaba, in 
Mexico; that its great river, the Yukon, computed to be not less than 3,000 
miles long, is navigable for a distance of 2,000 miles, is from one mile to 
five miles in breadth for no less than 1,000 miles of its course, and is seventy 
miles wide across its five mouths and the intervening deltas; and that, while 
the climate of the interior is Arctic in the severity of its winter and tropical in 
the heat of its summer, that of the immense southern coast, with its thousands 
of islands, is one of the most equable in the world, by reason of the Kuro-siwo, 
or Japan current, a thermal stream which renders the entire North Pacific 
Coast, even in this high latitude, warm and humid. Only four times in forty- 
five years has the temperature at Sitka fallen to zero, while only seven summers 
in that same period have been marked by a higher temperature than 80 ' Fah. 




(78) 



WONDERLAND. 79 

The influence of moisture in regulating temperature is too well known to call 
for any further remarks under this head, and the facts above given are stated 
only that they may help to dispel from the non-scientific mind the erroneous 
notions relative to the climate of this great territory, that so largely prevail. 

With the exception of the Tinneh, a tribe which has forced its way to the 
coast from the interior, the natives of Alaska are not Indians. Their traditions, 
manners, customs and other race characteristics prove them to belong to the 
Mongolian branch of the great human family. Between their racial and tribal des- 
ignations, the visitor, who hears of Thlinkets, Hydahs, Chilkats, Auks, Sitkans 
and many others, is liable to get somewhat confused. It may, therefore, be not 
only interesting but otherwise of advantage to him to know beforehand that the 
native population of the Territory, estimated to number 31,240 at the United 
States census of 1880, is divided into five races: (i) the Innuit, or Esquimaux, 
numbering 17,617, who occupy almost the entire coast line of the mainland; (2) 
the .•^leuts, numbering 2,145, inhabiting the Aleutian Islands; (3) the Tinneh, 
numbering 3,927, found chiefly in the Yukon district, on the Copper River and 
at Cook's Inlet, and the only race not supposed to be of common origin with 
the rest; (4) the Thlinkets, numbering 6,763, occupying almost exclusively that 
■ Southeastern division which the tourist is on his way to visit; and (5) the Hydahs, 
788 in number, on the southern half of Prince of Wales Island. The various tribes 
with which the traveler will come into contact are of the Thlinket race — des- 
cribed by Dr. Jackson as "a hardy, self-reliant, industrious, self-supporting, well- 
to-do, warlike, superstitious race, whose very name is a terror to the civilized 
Aleuts to the west, as well as to the savage Tinneh to the north of them." 

Deferring statements as to their tribal peculiarities to a place at which they 
can be set forth with greater advantage, let us now glance at the resources of 
the country, so far, at least, as they have been brought to light. These com- 
prise: (i) its world-renowned seal fisheries; (2) its salmon, cod, whale and her- 
ring fisheries; (3) its extensive deposits of gold, silver, copper, iron, coal and 
other minerals; and (4) its vast forests. 

The seal-fur fisheries, as is well-known, are leased for twenty years, from 
1868, to the Alaska Commercial Company, which pays the Government an annual 
rental of $55,000 for the islands, and a royalty of $2.62^ each on the 100,000 seal 
skins allowed to be taken annually. From this one source alone, therefore, the 
Government receives an annual sum of $317,500, or more than 4^ per cent, per 
annum on the amount paid to the Russian Government for the Territory. It 
may be mentioned in this connection, but only in view of its coming from an 
official source, that the Governor of the Territory, in his Report to the Secre- 
tary of the Interior for 1887, contends that this great monopoly is wholly inimi- 
cal to the true interests of the country. His Excellency brings many grave 
charges against the Company, which it is unnecessary to repeat here, and which 
are adverted to, only that an enlightened public sentiment may be created, and 
the hands of the Federal Government strengthened in dealing with the corpo- 
ration which has the control of so important a part of the wealth of the Territory. 



80 WONDERLAND. 

The salmon, cod and whale fisheries of Alaska are of far greater importance 
than is generally known, their yield, during 1887, being valued at $3,000,000, 
exclusive of the various products of the herring fisheries, which are both exten- 
sive and valuable. The most important point in the operations of this last- 
named industry is Killisnoo, on Admiralty Island, where as many as 138,000 
barrels of oil have been put up in a single month. 

Men are so liable to be carried away by excitement upon finding even the 
smallest traces of the precious metals, that the outside world, hearing or read- 
ing of their discoveries, at a distance, usually pays but little attention to them. 
While, however, the claims of Alaska to untold wealth in silver and copper 
must be admitted, if admitted at all, on mere hearsay, except so far as the 
reports of explorers are borne out by the geological formation of the country, 
every tourist has an opportunity of visiting, under the most advantageous and 
pleasurable circumstances, the greatest gold mine in the world, namely, the 
Treadwell Mine, on Douglas Island, of which more will be said in its proper 
place. 

It will be but a few years before the lumbering operations now going on in 
the forest belt of Washington Territory extend to this far northern region. 
The whole of southeastern Alaska is covered with a dense growth of spruce, 
hemlock and yellow cedar, frequently containing timber of from four to six feet 
in diameter at the base, and growing to a height of from thirty to forty feet 
before branching. The yellow cedar is said to be the most valuable timber on 
the Pacific coast, being highly prized, both by the cabinet-maker and ship-builder. 

With regard to agriculture, it will be sufficient to refer to the admirable 
report of the Governor of Alaska, for 1886, in which he combats the rash 
statements of various transient visitors, whose prominence obtains for their 
assertions a credence of which they are not always worthy; and, fortifying his 
statement with the authority of Mr. W. H. Dall, of the Smithsonian Institution, 
who has devoted more time and made more thorough researches into the 
natural resources of Alaska than any other person, declares that there are con- 
siderable areas of arable land, with a soil of sufficient depth and fertility to 
insure the growth of the very best crops, and that the experiments which have 
been made in the past two or three years have proved most conclusively that all 
the cereals, as well as the tubers, can be grown to perfection in Alaskan soil 
and climate. It is impossible in these pages to pursue this interesting and 
important subject further, but it may be stated that the Governor does not con- 
tent himself with mere assertion, but that, in addition to giving the results of 
the various experiments that have been made, he deals at some length with the 
subject of the native grasses of the Territory, all going to prove that the country 
is not nearly so worthless for agricultural purposes as interested detractors 
or careless and superficial observers would have us believe. 

Having thus acquainted himself with a few of the more important facts 
concerning this great Territory, the tourist is now prepared to resume his voyage. 
Crossing the broad expanse of Dixon Entrance, where, looking westward, we 



WONDERLAND. 81 

see the open sea, we enter Clarence Strait, over one hundred miles long and 
nowhere less than four miles in width. We are now within the remarkable 
geographical area known as Alexander Archipelago, a congeries of straits, 
islands, mlets, rocks and passages extending through nearly five degrees of 
latitude and seven of longitude. The islands of this archipelago definitely 
placed on the charts number i,ioo, and we have the authority of the United 
States Coast and Geodetic Survey for the statement that, if all the existing 
rocks and islands were enumerated, the number stated would have to be very 
considerably increased. 

Throughout the whole of Clarence Strait, we have on our left the great 
Prmce ot Wales Island, the home of the Hydahs, with whose marvelous skill 
in carving, the tourist doubtless became familiar during hisbrief stay at Victoria. 
Their miniature totems, cut in dark slate-stone, are greatly sought after by 
tourists and command a somewhat high price. The artistic skill of this famous 
tribe has, however, been better exemplified in its spoons, carved out of the horn 
of the mountain goat; but these have nearly all gone to enrich the collections 
of eastern visitors during the last two or three seasons, and during his visit to 
the Territorv, in the summer of 1887, the present writer found but a single 
specimen in many hundreds of carved goat's horn spoons, that sustained the 
reputation of the Hydahs for that delicacy of workmanship in which they 
well-nigh rival the ivory workers of Japan. 

It may be mentioned in this connection that the recently formed Alaskan 
Society of Natural History and Ethnology, whose headquarters are at Sitka, 
has already gathered together an exceedingly interesting and valuable collection 
of specimens of native handiwork; and visitors are invited to contribute to a 
fund which is being raised for the purchaseand preservation of Alaskan curios- 
ities of every description, especially those made by the natives before the influx 
of tourists found them the ready market they now possess, and led them, as it 
unfortunately did, to think more of the quantity than the quality of their work. 

The islands on our right as we continue our voyage are the Gravina Group, 
Revilla Gigedo and, after a promontory of the mainland, Etolin Island, round 
whose northern coast we steer northeastward to Fort Wrangell, usually the first 
calling place of the steamer, during the tourist season. The Gravina Islands 
contain a fine range of mountains, the higher peaks of which have their dark 
masses relieved by patches of snow. Revilla Gigedo Island likewise is mount- 
ainous — its nearer summits clothed with pine, its more distant ones crowned 
with everlasting snow. On Prince of Wales Island, the mountains rising before 
us are enveloped, for the most part, in a delicious purple haze. As we approach 
them, their rocky, precipitous and deeply fissured sides (the last the result of 
glacial action, which is plainly visible) afford a striking diversity of outline and 
color, which, added to the beauties of light and shade lent them by passing 
clouds, have a very fine effect. Clarence Strait is, indeed, a magnificent sheet 
of water, well worthy of its place in that remarkable series of devious water- 
ways through which our voyage lies. 




/I 






ALASKAN GRAVE AND TOTEM POLES AT FORT WRANGELL. 



(82) 



WONDERLAND. 83 

Fort Wrangcll, although formerly a place of some importance as the port of 
the Cassiar mines, away in the interior beyond the international boundary, is, of 
all the settlements at which the steamer calls, the least attractive in every 
respect save that it is here that the tourist will find the largest assemblage of 
totem poles that he will have an opportunity of seeing, as well as several old 
graves of singularly striking appearance. The village, which occupies a beauti- 
ful site, is given up almost entirely to the Stikine tribe of the Thlinket race, and, 
within a few minutes after the arrival of the steamer at the wharf, the interior of 
almost every house presents an animated appearance, curio-huntmg passengers 
thronging them to the doors, and bargaining with their inmates for the various 
objects of interest they see around them. 

The ship's officers, government officials and other persons supposed to be 
well informed are frequently asked which of the various stoppmg places is the 
best for the purchase of curiosities. In anticipation of this inquiry, it may be 
stated that there is little to choose between Fort Wrangell, Juneau and Sitka, 
except that in the fine store of Messrs. Koehler tS: James, at Juneau, the visitor 
will find a larger collection of the more desirable and costly specimens of native 
handiwork, as well as of valuable furs, than at either of the other two places. 
At anyone of them, however, and at any moment, he may run across something 
that could not be duplicated in the entire Territory, although each recurring sea- 
son renders this less and less probable. 

A strongly marked trait m the character of the Thlinkets is their respect 
for their ancestors. Independently of their tribal distinctions, which are little 
more than local, they are divided into four totems or clans, each of which 
is known by a badge or emblem used much in the same way as is the crest or 
coat of arms among the old families of Europe. These, according to Mr. 
W. H. Dall, are the Raven, the Wolf, the Whale and the Eagle ; and these 
emblems are carved on their houses, household utensils, paddles and fre- 
quently on amulets of native copper, which they preserve with scrupulous care 
and consider to be of the greatest value. In front of many of their houses, and 
also at their burial places, are posts varying from twenty to sixty feet in height 
and from two to five feet in diameter, carved to represent successive ancestral 
totems and usually stained black, red and blue. As already stated, several 
of these totem poles, as they are called, are to be seen at Fort Wrangell, as 
well as two remarkable graves, one surmounted by a rudely carved whale, 
and the other by a huge figure of a wolf. 

Resuming our voyage, we leave this curious old Stikine town, and after 
steaming westward to the southern entrance to Wrangell Strait, turn northward 
and follow that narrow passage into the broader Dry Strait, where we have 
the magnificent Patterson Glacier on our right and find considerable floating 
ice. Following the north shore of Kupreanoff Island, we enter Frederick 
Sound; but quickly resume our almost directly northward course by entering 
Stephens Passage, where we have Admiralty Island on our left, said, by the 
way, to be swarming with bear, and the mainland on our right. On Stockade 




~-mt-^ ^ 



A THLINKET FAMILY. 



(84) 



WONDERLAND. 85 

Point, a comparatively low peninsula from which the land rises rapidly to 
snow-capped mountains, is a ruined block-house and stockade, built by the 
Hudson's IJay Comixiny, and on the other side of a small inlet is Grave 
Point, a native burial ground. Leaving to the right Taku Inlet, we enter 
the narrow and picturesque Gastiaeau Channel, between the mainland and 
the now famous Douglas Island. Here, on a narrow strip of land, at the 
foot of a deep ravine between two precipitous mountains, stands Juneau, a 
cluster of detached white houses, relieved here and there by the unpainted 
frame-work of others in process of building. The mountain rising behind it, 
as you approach it from the south, is deeply fissured, and seamed with snow, 
and the town itself is built mainly upon a huge land-slide. Not a few of the 
houses have apparently been built by white settlers attracted to the spot by 
the fabulously rich mineral deposits of the district. These have been followed 
by general traders, who, in addition to supplying the resident population with 
the necessaries of life, reap a rich harvest, during the tourist season, from 
the sale of sundry products of native handiwork and the skins of the various 
fur-bearing animals. 

An excellent weekly newspaper, called the Alaska Free Press, is published 
at Juneau. The visitor need not turn to its pages for any later news from 
the outside world than he is already in possession of, for Alaska has not, as 
yet, the advantage of telegraphic communication with the rest of the world. 
He will find, however, much interesting reading relative to the mining 
resources of the district and the Territory generally; a column or two of spicy 
local items and, possibly, the report of some recently returned explorer; while 
the business advertisements of this thriving settlement of the Yds North will be 
by no means devoid of interest. 

Juneau itself, however, as a point of interest to the tourist, is soon exhausted, 
and his thoughts turn to the great Treadwell mine, 

THE RICHEST GOLD MINE IN THE WORLD, 

which lies across the channel on Douglas Island, whither the steamer will 
proceed after a brief stay at Juneau. It is by no means an easy task to deter- 
mine which of the many extraordinary statements relative to this valuable 
property that one hears from time to time are worthy of credence and which 
are not; and even when the truth has been approximately ascertained, there 
remains the difficulty of determining how much may properly be made public, 
and how much should be regarded as only the individual and private concern of 
the owners of the mine. In view, however, of the fact that the mill has, for 
some time, had in operation a larger number of stamps than any other mill in 
the world; that by the time this pamphlet leaves the press the works will con- 
tain more ore-crushing machinery than the five largest mines in Butte City, all 
combined, and that the Governor of the Territory himself places the output of 
the mine for 1887 at $100,000 per month, it is surely not incredible that the 
company should have refused $16,000,000 for its property, or that it pays a 



WONDERLAND. 87 

dividend of loo per cent, per month, all the year round; or yet, at least to those 
who have seen it, that the ore actually in sight is worth about five times the 
amount paid to the Russian (Government for the entire Territory, and that, even 
at the present enormous rate of production, it cannot be exhausted in less than 
a century. 

Although it cannot but interfere to some extent with the operations of the 
mine, visitors are, with great courtesy, shown everything that is likely to prove 
of interest to them. They see the natives earning $2.50 per day each in the 
mine, and learn to their surprise that they are better workmen than the whites; 
they see the ore in every stage from blasting to final separation, and though they 
may leave with a tinge of regret that it has not been their own luck to have 
made so valuable a discovery, they will none the less congratulate the owners 
on their magnificent possession. It will have been inferred, from what has 
already been said, that it is not a mere vein of gold, of varying richness and un- 
certain direction, that is here being worked. So far from that, the entire island 
is nothing less than a mountain of ore, sufficient, according to ex-Governor 
Stoneman of California, to pay off the whole of the national debt. 

Gastineau Channel not having been thoroughly explored, we retrace our 
course to its southern entrance, where, turning northward, we follow the wider 
channel that lies to the west of the island. This brings us to that remarkable 
and never-to-be-forgotten body of water, the Lynn Canal, where not only have 
we scenery surpassing in wildness and grandeur all that has preceded it, but 
also many glaciers, while we reach, just under the parallel of 60°, the most 
northerly point we shall attain on our trip. Soon after entering the canal, and 
when rounding Point Retreat, we see the great Eagle Glacier to the northeast, 
coming down from the high mountains that rise in the background. A couple 
of hours' sail, however, brings us to a point at which we can observe much more 
closely the still larger Davidson Glacier, on the opposite shore. But even here 
we do not go ashore, for the far-famed Muir Glacier, which we shall reach 
within the next twenty-four hours, has the advantage of being as much more 
easily accessible than its sister glaciers as it exceeds them in magnitude, beauty 
and general interest. 

How unimpressionable soever the tourist may be, a mysterious sense of awe 
is almost sure to take possession of him when the steamer is exploring the two 
inlets of Chilkat and Chilkoot, in which the Lynn Canal terminates. Not, per- 
haps, until vegetation has almost entirely disappeared, will he have noticed its 
increasing scantiness, but it will not be long before he realizes the fact that in 
the forbidding mountains, the bare rocks and the nineteen great ice cataracts 
that here discharge themselves into the sea, he sees a picture more closely 
resembling the scenes of the now not distant Arctic world than, probably, he 
will ever again have an opportunity of gazing upon. 

The natives of this region are that famous tribe, the Chilkats, whose 
dexterously woven dancing blankets are so much sought after by all visitors to 
Alaska who desire to take home with them the finest examples of Alaskan 




(88) 



WONDERLAND. 89 

handiwork, regardless of cost. They are made from the wool of the white 
mountain goat, out of whose black horns are carved the spoons and ladles 
already referred to. The white wool is hung from an upright frame, and into it 
nimble fingers weave, by means of ivory shuttles, curious and beautiful patterns 
from yarn dyed with a variety of brilliant colors. 

We have now to retrace our course some sixty-five miles to Point Retreat, 
where, instead of taking the easterly channel and returning to Juneau, we con- 
tinue almost directly southward to the point at which the waters of Lynn Canal 
mingle with those of ley Strait. Here, our good ship's course is once more 
directed northward, and, after a brief sail, we enter the island-studded Glacier 
Bay, where innumerable icebergs proclaim our approach to that crowning glory 
of this veritable Wonderland, the famous Muir Glacier, undoubtedly the 

GREATEST GLACIER IN THE WORLD, 

outside of the Polar seas. It is hard to say which has the greater advantage — 
the traveler who sees it first from afar; sees it as a vast river of ice flowing 
down from between the mountains, with many tributaries both on the right and 
left, and to whom its beauties are gradually unfolded with the nearer approach 
of the steamer; or he who, awakened from his slumber by the thunderous roar 
which announces the birth of some huge iceberg, hurries on deck to gaze upon 
a picture without parallel in the known world — a perpendicular wall of ice, tower- 
ing to five times the height of the mast-head, and glowing in the sunlight like a 
mountain of mother-of-pearl. A recent visitor to this indescribable scene — 
himself possessing descriptive powers of no mean order — declares that in the 
narrative of his Alaska trip he would prefer to insert a series of asterisks where 
his description of the Muir Glacier should come; and certainly we need a new 
vocabulary to set forth its wondrous beauty with any degree of fidelity. While, 
as will be inferred from what has already been stated, its dimensions are such 
as to constitute it one of the physical wonders of the world, its proportions are 
so admirable that the traveler is less impressed with its immensity than with its 
utter novelty and incomparable beauty; and it is as much a revelation to those 
who have seen the glaciers of Switzerland or familiarized themselves with the 
voyages of Arctic and Antarctic explorers, as it is to those whose ideas of a 
glacier were of the most indefinite and inadequate character. 

The breadth of the glacier at its snout is fully a mile, and when, almost 
under its shadow, the second officer heaves the lead and sings out: "One hundred 
and five fathoms, and no bottom, Sir,'' the wonderment of the traveler is 
heightened by an immediate realization of the fact that this enormous ice-flow 
extends at least twice as far below the surface of the water as it rises above it, 
and that it is accordingly not less than 1,000 feet deep. But its vast dimensions 
and Its marvelous gradations of color, from pure white to deepest indigo, do not 
alone make up that unapproachable /^«/'(?«.y^w/V^ which is the wonder and delight 
of every visitor. To speak of it as a perpendicular wall of ice almost necessarily 
conveys the idea of comparative regularity, as though it were a suddenly 



90 WONDERLAND. 

congealed cataract. Instead of that, however, the face of the glacier is composed 
of crystal blocks of every conceivable size and shape, many of them having 
angular projections or rising cliff-like from its brink, until, with a roar like that 
of the distant discharge of heavy ordnance it comes their turn to fall off into 
the sea. 

The disintegration of these immense masses, some of them weighing thousands 
of tons, suggests the interesting question: How fast does the glacier move 
forward ? Professor G. Frederick Wright, of Oberlin, Ohio, in an exceedingly 
interesting article in the American Journal of Science, for January, 1887, 
declares, as the result of careful observation extending over several weeks that 
its progressive daily movement during the month of August is seventy feet at 
the centre and ten feet at the margin, or an average of forty feet per day. Its 
general movement being entirely imperceptible, — it is only seven-twelfths of 
an inch per minute where it is greatest — Professor Wright's assertion has 
somewhat rashly been disputed by visitors who have not been at the trouble 
to make observations for themselves. But there is surely nothing incredible in 
a forward movement averaging, at most, forty feet per day, in view of the 
continualfallingoff of such immense masses, especially when it is remembered that 
Professor J. D. Forbes found the Mer de Glace to move forward at the rate of 
from 15 to 17. 5 inches per day, at a much less angle, with an infinitely smaller 
volume of ice behind it, and diminishing at its termination, only by the slow 
process of liquefaction. 

The steamer usually remains in front of the glacier an entire day, and pas- 
sengers are landed on a dry and solid moraine, from which a larger area of the 
glacier than they will care to explore is within comparatively easy reach. Every 
one should climb up on to the great ice-field — 

" A crystal pavement by the breath of Ileaven 
Cemented firm : '' 

look down into its profound crevasses, and view also the magnificent panorama 
of Arctic scenery that it commands, including Mount Crillon, raising its snowy 
crest against the sky to a height of 15,900 feet. 

However indulgent be the Captain, this red-letter day in the experience of 
the visitor — a veritable epoch in his life — comes to an end at last. The whistle 
is sounded, and slowly and cautiously the steamer threads her way through the 
floating ice, and is headed for Sitka. This stage of the trip might be consider- 
ably shortened by the steamer putting out to sea through Cross Sound, and it is 
only to avoid the disagreeable experience to her passengers that would attend 
the outside passage, that she takes a less direct course. 

Proceeding southeastward through Icy Strait, we enter Chatham Strait, one 
of the most extensive and remarkable of the inland highways of the Alexander 
Archipelago. From this broad sheet of water we go westward through Peril 
Straits, a designation that might excite some little apprehension were we not 
told that it was bestowed upon the channel through which we pass, not because 



WONDERLAND. 91 

of any difficulty or danger attending its navigation, but on account of the death 
there, in 1799, of a large number of Aleuts who had partaken of poisonous 
mussels. For two-thirds of the distance traversed by the steamer, the straits 
are several miles wide, but they ultimately narrow to a width of less than half a 
mile, to form, with Neva and Olga Straits, a succession of beautiful channels, 
studded with charming islands and presenting a striking contrast to the desolate- 
looking shores of Glacier Bay. 

There is no trip in the world of corresponding duration that is less monoto- 
nous than this two weeks' excursion to Alaska. The tourist is continually 
being greeted by scenes utterly unlike any he has ever before gazed upon, while 
the contrasts presented by successive days' experiences are, themselves, as 
delightful as they are surprising. Should the steamer, for example, come to an 
anchorage in Sitka Sound during the night or in the early morning, the traveler 
will be almost startled by the novel, picturesque and altogether pleasing appear- 
ance of the scene that will greet him when he goes on deck to take his first 
view of the Capital city. On the one hand are the glistening waters of the bay, 
studded with innumerable rocky, moss-covered islands, affording a scanty foot- 
hold for undersized firs and spruce; with that extraordinary-looking peak, Mount 
Edgecumbe, rising beyond, an almost perfect cone, save that its apex has been 
cut off so sharply as to leave it with a perfectly flat top, in which is a crater 
said to be 2,000 feet in diameter and about 200 feet deep. On the other hand, 
from a cluster of more or less quaint-looking buildings, rises Baranoff Castle, 
the former residence of a long succession of stern Muscovite governors, and 
the emerald-green cupola and dome of the Russo-Greek church, with lofty 
mountains, including the frowning Vostovia, in the background. 

It is with an already formed favorable impression of the place that the 
passenger steps ashore, to visit the two remarkable buildings above mentioned, 
of which, probably, he has often heard and read; to saunter through the curious 
streets of the town, and to pick up in its stores and in the houses of the natives 
additional specimens of Alaskan handiwork and other curiosities; to visit the 
Training School and Mission, where native boys and girls are bemg educated. 
Christianized and taught useful trades; and, possibly, to pay his respects to 
some member of that admirable body of United States officials, now administer- 
ing the affairs of the Territory with so much success. 

Baranoff Castle is not a grim, ivy-covered and decaying stronghold, with 
turrets, battlements and keep, but a plain, square, substantial, yellow frame 
building, surmounted by a little look-out tower, upon which might have been 
seen until recently the revolving anemometer of the United States Signal 
Service, whose station here hiis just been given up, presumably in view of the 
fact that observations having been carefully made and recorded for no less than 
half a century, first by the Russians and afterward by the Americans, there 
remains no necessity for its further continuance. The interest that attaches to 
the Castle is almost entirely either historical or traditional. Among the memories 
that haunt its great ball-room is that of the beautiful niece of Baron Romanoff, 




INDIAN RIVER, SITKA, ALASKA. 
(9i) 



WONDERLAND. 93 

one of its Muscovite governors, said to have been fatally stabbed on her wed- 
ding night by her own lover, in whose enforced absence she had been com- 
pelled by her uncle to marry a previously rejected suitor of nobler birth. 

The most mteresting object in the city, however, is the Russo-Greek church, 
not so much for what it is in itself, as for the paintmgs, vestments and other 
art treasures it contams. Among these is an exquisite pamtmg of the 
Madonna and Child, copied from a celebrated picture at Moscow, and so 
largely covered with gold and silver — after the manner of the Greek Church — 
that but little of the picture is to be seen except the faces. Another of its 
treasures is a Bishop's crown, supposed to be several hundred years old, 
and almost covered with emeralds, sapphires and pearls. 

Steamer day is a great day at Sitka, and the scanty American population — 
together with prominent members of the Russo- American community, like Mr. 
George Kostrometinoff, the Government Interpreter — give themselves up almost 
entirely to showing civilities to the visitors who throng the chief places of interest. 
They are naturally wishful that tourists should take away a favorable impression 
of Alaska generally and Sitka in particular, and Dr. Sheldon Jackson, General 
Agent of Education in Alaska, under the United States Government, usually 
affords the visitor an opportunity of judging of the excellence of the work that 
is being carried on among the natives, not forgetting, at the same time, to urge 
the utter inadequacy of the miserable pittance annually doled out by Congress 
for educational purposes in this vast Territory. In this connection it may also 
be stated that the Russian inhabitants themselves complain bitterly of the faith- 
lessness of our Government to the pledges given to Russia at the time of the 
purchase, with regard to the provision of educational facilities and other rights 
of citizenship. 

Having visitei the Training School, the tourist should continue ;iis \v:.lk to 
Indian River, along the right bank of which a well-marked trail will :,onduct 
him to a woodland scene that will form one of the most delightful reminiscences 
of his visit to Sitka. 

Returning to the town, he may have the curiosity to inquire the price of some 
of the principal articles of food, when he wUl find that he can buy fresh salmon at 
from one cent to a cent and a half per pound, halibut and black bass at one-half 
cent per pound, venison at from six to eight cents per pound, teal ducks at twenty 
cents per pair, and other varieties of game-food at correspondingly low prices. 

When, falling in with some intelligent resident, he learns how many 
attractive and mteresting places there are within easy reach of the town ; when 
he is told of the sublime scenery at the head of Silver Bay, including Sara- 
binokoff Cataract, with its fall of 500 feet; of the rich mines in its vicinity, with 
ores assaying from $4,000 to $6,000 per ton ; when he hears of the comparative 
facility with which Mount Edgecumbe can be ascended and — assuming him to 
be a sportsman — of the abundance of game on the slopes of Mount Vostovia, as 
well as in other equally accessible localities, the traveler cannot help regretting 
that his visit to so attractive a reg-ion must so soon come to an end. 



94 WONDERL A ND. 

Only a brief reference has thus far been made to the ahiiost nightless day 
that prevails in this northern latitude at midsummer, and it may therefore be 
stated that, while, at Sitka, the period between sunrise and sunset at the summer 
solstice is only two and one-quarter hours longer than it is at New York or 
Boston, the twilight is of such long duration that it can scarcely be said ever to 
get dark, the last glow hardly dying out ni the Northwest before the first flush 
of dawn appears in the NortHeast. 

It is scarcely too much to say that no tourist ever visited even this southeast- 
ern strip of Alaska, who did not ever afterward feel a profound interest in 
whatever concerned the welfare of this distant portion of our great country, and 
labor to remove the various misconceptions so long current with regard to it. 
Readers of these pages, therefore, desirous of keeping thoroughly an coi/rant 
with the affairs of the Territory; of knowing, from time to time, how rapidly, 
and in what new directions, the development of its vast wealth-producing capa- 
bilities is proceeding; what scientists are saying with regard to its glaciers and its 
other remarkable natural features; what success is attending the efforts that are 
being made, both by educational and religious agencies, to civilize the still half- 
savage native races of the country, and what light is being thrown on hitherto 
perplexing questions in ethnology and kindred sciences by the labors of the 
society recently formed at Sitka for their investigation, will not consider the 
present writer to have gone needlessly out of his way if he refers them to the 
interesting columns of T/ic Alaskan, a well-conducted weekly journal published 
at Sitka, in which everything of public interest relating to the Territory finds a 
place commensurate with its importance. 

Sitka is usually the last calling-place of the Alaska excursion, although it 
occasionally happens that some other point, already dealt with in these pages, is 
reserved for the steamer's homeward voyage. Should, however, the good ship's 
return trip be marked by no strikingly novel experiences, and have no break 
until she is once more moored alongside the wharf at Victoria, the matchless 
scenery of that long succession of land-locked channels she will traverse, 
observed from new i^oints of view and under new physical conditions, will, with 
agreeable companionship and other social pleasures, render the homeward 
voyage possibly even more truly enjoyable than were those first few days before 
the barriers of reserve were broken down, and when the rapid succession of one 
sublime and unlooked-for spectacle after another kept the mind in a state of 
perpetual tension. 

Victoria, Port Townsend, Seattle, Tacoma, the Northern Pacific Railroad and 
— home ! Our bright dream — No! All is too real, too vivid, too enduring, for 
any such simile. Familiar scenes and prosaic duties may once more engross us, 
but our trip to Wonderland will remain to the end of our lives a bright chapter 
in our experience, to whose glowing pictures we shall continually recur with 
ever-increasing delight. 



lortl^ern * eDi^eiFie • ^ - \{ 



RATES AND ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE TOURIST SEASON 



MINNESOTA SUMMER RESORTS.— The Northern I'acilk Railroad will sell round- 
trip excursion tickets from St. Paul or Minneapolis to (Jlenwood (Lake Minnevvaska) at fC.oo, Battle 
Lake, $6.90; Detroit Lake, $10.00; Minnewaukan ( Devil's Lake), $20.00. From Duluth or Superior 
to Battle Lake, $6.90; Detroit Lake, $10.00; Minnewaukan, $20.00. From Ashland, AVis., to 
Battle Lake, $9.00; Detroit Lake, $11.50, Minnewaukan, $21.50. Tickets on sale May ist to 
October 27th, inclusive. Good Jjoing to Minnesota resorts one day (from Ashland two days), to 
Minnew-aukan (Devil's Lake) two days from date of sale Good to return on or before October 31st. 
YELLOWSTONE PARK RATES.— The Northern Tacific Railroad, the only rail 
line to the Park, 'will sell round-trip excursion tickets at the following rates; 

A $110.00 liook Ticket, including the following traveling expenses, from St. Paul, Minneapolis, 
Duluth or Ashland on the east, and Portland or Tacoma on the west, to and through the Park 
and return to starting point, viz.: Railroad and stage transportation, Pullman sleeping car fares, 
meals on Northern Pacific dining cars and at Hotel Albemarle at Livingston (Junction of Main 
Line and Park Branch), and board and lodging at the Park Association Hotels five days. 

A $75.00 Rail-stage Ticket from St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth or Ashland to Norris, Lower 
and Upper Geyser Basins in the Park and return. 

A $50.00 Round-trip Ticket, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth or Ashland to Livingston and 
return. 

A $10.00 Book Ticket, Livingston to INLammoth Hot Springs Hotel and return, including 
rail and stage transportation and one day's board at Mammoth Hot Springs. 

A $30.00 Book Ticket, Livingston to Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris, Lower and Upper 
Geyser 15asins and return, including rail and Stage transportation, and four days' board and 
lodging at the Association Hotels. 

A $40 00 Book Ticket, Livingston to Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris, Lower and Upper 
Geyser Basins and Yellowstone Falls and Canon and return, including rail and stage transporta- 
tion and five days' board and lodging at the Association Hotels. 

Limit and Conditions of Tickets — The $110.00 and $75 00 Tickets will be on sale at 
eastern and western termini named, June 13th to September 27th, inclusive; by eastern lines, June 
I2th to September 25th, limit 40 days; good going 30 days, returning 10 days, but must be used 
in the Park before October 5th. Stopovers within final limit at or east of Billings, and at or west 
of Helena. Return portion of ticket must be signed and stamped at Mammoth Hot Springs 
Hotel, after which ticket must be presented on main line train for return passage within one day 
from such date. Stopovers in Park granted at pleasure of holder within final limit of ticket. 

Liinit of $50.00 Ticket and stopover privileges same as above, return portion of ticket to be 
stamped and signed at Livingston ticket office. 

Coupons in Book Tickets may be used in Park without regard to items or localities specified 
on their face. 

The $10.00, $30 00 and $40.00 Tickets, on sale at Livingston and eastern and western termini 
between dates first named above, are good if used between June 15th and October 1st, both 
dates inclusive, and do not require identification of purchaser. 

MONTANA AND EASTERN WASHINGTON POINTS— The Northern Pacific 
Railroad will sell daily, on and after April ist, round-trip excursion tickets to Bozeman at $52.00, 
Helena and Butte $56 00, and Spokane Falls at $70.00. 

These tickets will be of iron-clad signature form, and will require identification of purchaser at 
return starting point. Bozeman, Helena and Butte tickets will be limited to 90 days, good going 
20 days and returning 10 days. Spokane Falls tickets will be limited to 90 days, good going 30 
days, returning 30 days. Stopovers granted at any point within limits stated. 

NORTH PACIFIC COAST EXCURSIONS.— An $80.00 Round-trio Individual Ex- 
cursion Ticket, St Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth or Ashland to Tacoma, Portland or Victoria, is on 
sale daily at points first named, and by eastern lines. 

Tacoma, Victoria or Portland tickets at above rates will be mw^-^/ going via Cascade Division. 
returning via Columbia River Line or vice versa; Portland tickets via either Cascade Division or 
Columbia River, returning via Union Pacific to either Omaha or Kansas City; and Victoria 
tickets good to return via Canadian Pacific to either Winnipeg, Pt Arthur, St Paul or Minne- 
apolis. Portland, Tacoma and Victoria excursion tickets reading both ways via Northern Pacific 
may be exchanged to return via Canadian Pacific Railway, and Portland tickets for return via 
Union Pacific to Omaha or Kansas City at charge of $10.00; Tacoma tickets exchanged at Portland 
to return via Union Pacific to Omaha or Kansas City. 



On presentation and payment of $25.0010 the General Passenger Agent of either the O. & C. 
R. R. or O. R. & Nav. Co. at Portland, return tickets will be issued by the Shasta route or the 
ocean to San Francisco, thence via any of the southern trans-continental lines to Omaha, 
Kansas City, Mineola or Houston, and on payment of $31.00 to New Orleans or St. Louis. 

CONDITIONS. — Above tickets limited to six months from date of sale ; good going trip 
sixty days to any one of North Pacific coast termini named, returning any time within final limit, 
which limit will be extended on payment of $10.00 for each additional thirty days' time given. 
Usual stopover privileges granted. 

ALASKA EXCURSIONS. — An excursion ticket will be sold from eastern termini named 
to Sitka, Alaska, at $175.00, which rate includes meals and berths on Alaska steamer. Tickets 
on sale, May ist to November ist. Limit, six months. Going to Tacoma, sixty days, returning 
within final limit, holder to leave Sitka on or before November 30th. Usual stopover privileges 
granted. Steamer accommodations can be secured in advance by application to any of the agents 
named below. Diagrams of steamers at office General Passenger Agent at St. Paul. 

CALIFORNIA EXCURSION RATES.— The Northern Pacific Railroad will sell 
round trip excursion tickets from St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth or Ashland, via Cascade Division or 
Columbia River and Portland, and either the Shasta route or the ocean to San Francisco, returning 
same route, or by southern lines to Omaha, Kansas City, Mineola or Houston at $95.00 , to New 
Orleansor St. Louisat$ioi.oo; to St. Paul or Minneapolis via Missouri River $105.00. Tickets 
via ocean include meals and berths on steamer. 

At the eastern termini of the southern trans-continental lines, excursion tickets will b.'" sold, 
or orders exchanged, for tickets to San Francisco, returning via either the Shasta route, the ail-rail 
line to Portland, or the ocean and the Northern Pacific to St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth or 
Ashland, at rate $15,00 higher than the current excursion rate in effect between Missouri River 
points, Mineola or Houston and San P'rancisco The steamship coupon includes first-class cabin 
passage and meals between San Francisco and Portland. 

If, however, holders of excursion tickets, the return portion of which read by one of the 
southern lines to a Missouri River point or Houston or Mineola, desire to return east via the 
Shasta route, Portland and Northern Pacific R. R. to St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth or Ashland, 
they can do so on payment of $25.00 to Mr. T. H. Goodman, General Passenger Agent, Southern 
Pacific Company, San Francisco ; if return via ocean, by payment of $15.00 to Mr. D. B. Jackson, 
General Passenger Agent Pacific Coast S. S. Co., San Francisco, and $10.00 (for exchange of 
tickets) to A. D. Charlton, Assistant General Passenger Agent, N. P. R. R., No. 2 Washington 
Street, Portland, Ore. The expense of $10.00 for exchange of ticket at San Francisco or Port- 
land, can be avoided by the purchaser's designating the return route, via Portland and the 
Northern Pacific, either when purchasing the original tickets or exchanging their orders for 
tickets at eastern terminals of trans-continental hnes. 

Return coupons reading from Missouri River points to Chicago or St. Louis will be honored 
from St. Paul or Minneapolis, either free, or with a small additional charge, according to the route. 

These excursion tickets allow six months' time for the round trip ; sixty days allowed for west- 
bound trip up to first Pacific coast common point ; return any time within final limit, which limit 
will be extended on payment of $10.00 for each additional thirty days' time given. Stopovers 
granted in either direction. 



f A. D. CHARLTON, Assistant Gen'l Passenger Agent, 2 Washing'ton St., Poi-tland, Ore. 
JAMES C. POND, Assistant General Ticket Agent, St. Paul. Minn. 
General and ' C. B. KINNAN, General Agent Passenger Dept., 319 Broadway, New York City. 
J. L. HARRIS, New England Agent, 306 "Washington Street, Boston, Mass. 



E. R. "WADSWORTH, General Agent. 52 Clark Street, Chicago, 111. 



Special 

\ A. L. STOKES, General Agent, Helena, Mont. 
• ".■ Agents. / JAMES McCAIG, Ticket Agent, Butte, Mont. 

A. W. HARTMAN, General Agent, Duluth, Minn. 
\ A. RODELHEIMER, General Agent, corner High and Chestnut Sts., Columbus, Ohio. 

) THOMAS HENRY, Agent, 154 St. James Street, Montreal, Canada. 

G. G. CHANDIiEB, Passenger Agent, 901'/;: Pacific Avenue, Tacoma. 

A. J. QUIN, 306 "Washington Street, Boston, Mass. 

J. H. ROGERS, Jr., Ill South Ninth Street, Philadelphia, Penn. 

li. L. BILLING SLE A, 111 South Ninth Street, Philadelphia, Penn. 

GEO. D. TELLER, 44 Exchange Street, Buffalo, N. Y. 

D. "W. JANO"WITZ, 48 South Illinois Street, IndianapoUs, Ind. 

F. H. LORD, 52 Clark Street, Chicago, 111. 

T. L. SHORTELL, 112 North Fourth Street, St. Louis, Mo. 

S. H. MILLS, 152 "Walnut Street, Cincinnati, Ohio. 

T. S. PATTY, 24 "West Ninth Street, Chattanooga. Tenn, 

EL"VIN H. SMITH, 392 Broadway, Milwaukee, "Wis. 

A. A. JACK, 200 Fourth Street, Des Moines, Iowa. 

"W. F. CARSON, 2 "Washington Street, Portland, Ore. 

T. K. STATELEB, 618 Market Street, San Francisco, Cal. 




Traveling Passenger 
Agents. 

Hk, :^ ^ M. 
•71^ 7P^ vl^ -7^ 



M. HANNAFORD, 

Traffic Manager, 



CHAS S. FEE, 

General Passenger and Ticket A^ent.. 
ST. PAUL, MINN. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



005 908 169 A 




